After his first place finish in Iowa, which was supposed to propel him to a New Hampshire victory, “change” is probably a word Barack Obama does not like as much anymore. But, his support did not really change much between these two elections. He won 38 percent of Iowa’s delegates and 36 percent of New Hampshire’s vote. It was Hillary Clinton and John McCain who were the big change candidates.

What happens when a presidential candidate that does well in a primary or caucus state, does not do so well in the next? The dynamic of the presidential election can swiftly and stunningly change, as it did in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

How Barack Obama wishes John Edwards showed up in New Hampshire.

Edwards was awarded 30 percent of Iowa’s delegates, barely denying Clinton a second place finish. He finished a distant third in New Hampshire, receiving only 17 percent of the vote. There are strong indications that a shift among his supporters helped propel Hillary Clinton to her New Hampshire victory.

According to the exit polls, Edwards did 8 percentage points worse in New Hampshire among women, while Clinton did 16 percent better. Obama’s support was virtually identical, dropping a statistically insignificant 1 percentage point.

Obama’s support among young people remained strong, if slightly increasing among 18-24 and 30-39 year olds. Clinton’s support remained strong and slightly increased among those 65 and older. Edwards won Iowa’s middle-aged voters, age 40-64, but it was Clinton who decisively won this coveted age demographic in New Hampshire. And where these people were 38 percent Iowa caucus attendees, they were 54 percent of New Hampshire voters. (To understand why their turnout increased, see my analysis of Iowa’s turnout .)

Moving forward, the generational war is still a strong dynamic in the Democratic race, as evident in the candidates’ speech styles following the election results. In Iowa, Clinton was flanked by the ghosts of the Clinton administration. In New Hampshire, she shared the stage with a sea of young voters. In Iowa, Obama spoke of change, a message that resonates with younger people who are not part of the establishment. In New Hampshire his slogan was a message that echoes the can-do spirit of the greatest generation, “Yes, we can!”

In the days between Iowa and New Hampshire, Edwards spoke about how he wanted the election to become a two-way race. One should be careful with what one wishes for. Edwards and Clinton are vying for the same support base, that when united can defeat Obama, at least in New Hampshire. In the short-term, Obama most needs Edwards to do better so that support can continue to be divided.

Among Republicans, John McCain recreated his magic of eight years ago and bounced back strong from a poor Iowa showing to win New Hampshire.

The Iowa and New Hampshire electorates are so different it is difficult to compare them. In Iowa, Evangelical Christians were 60 percent of the electorate, while in New Hampshire, they were only 23 percent. Mike Huckabee’s move from first in Iowa to third in New Hampshire can be clearly attributed to the shrinking of his base. His collapse paved the way for a new winner to emerge.

It is thus tempting to attribute McCain’s victory solely to the different electorates, but he still had to defeat Mitt Romney to win New Hampshire.

According to the exit polls, the battle between McCain and Romney is a referendum on the Bush administration. Surprisingly, McCain, who has tried to rebuild bridges with the Bush establishment since his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, is still seen as the outsider and agent of change by voters participating in the Republican nomination process.

In both Iowa and New Hampshire, McCain drew his support from those who said they are angry or dissatisfied with the Bush administration. Romney drew his support from those who said they are enthusiastic or satisfied. Not surprisingly, McCain is also drawing more support from self-described Independents and Romney from Republicans.

The candidates seem to understand this dynamic, too, as they gave their speeches following the election results. In a contrived bit of acting, Romney showed up on stage without a podium and shoved a prepared speech back into his pocket (if he had needed a podium, his advance team would have provided it). He appeared relaxed, delivering his speech in a personable style reminiscent of Huckabee, who is competing with Romney for those who support Bush. But he also seemed to be reaching out to Independents with a message of change. In stark contrast, McCain delivered a carefully written, almost sedate speech designed to reassure Republicans of his conservative credentials.

This three-way dynamic between Huckabee, McCain, and Romney should prove fascinating as the Republican nomination process moves forward. Where Evangelicals are strong, Huckabee should do well. Where they are not, the rules governing if Independents can or cannot participate will dictate how McCain and Romney do. And we have yet to see regional candidates like Fred Thompson have their day in the sun. And then there is Rudy Giuliani, who is lying in wait in the larger states where his name recognition should give him a significant boost over the other candidates. All of this points to an extended campaign among Republicans.

Michael P. McDonald is an Associate Professor at George Mason University and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He studies voter turnout and is a consultant to the national exit poll organization.

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As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

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With little time remaining until the midterm elections, campaigning is intensifying and the outcome for control of Congress remains uncertain. Voter enthusiasm and turnout will be big factors in the elections, where Republicans have demonstrated a leg up in the party’s primaries.

On October 20, Brookings expert Michael McDonald answered your questions about what the polls and early voting are telling us about the upcoming midterm elections, in a live web chat moderated by POLITICO Assistant Editor Seung Min Kim. McDonald, with Seth McKee, is author of "Revenge of the Moderates," in today's POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows:

12:30 Seung Min Kim: Good afternoon, everyone! We have just under two weeks until the Nov. 2 midterm elections, and the Brookings Institution's Michael McDonald is here to answer your questions. Thanks and welcome, Michael.

12:30 [Comment From Dale Dean (Arlington): ] I was wondering from the historical record how closely early results mirror the actual results. Are there systemic distortions in early voting that are the same over many elections or do they differ with each election?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting does not necessarily correspond with Election Day voting. Several data sources suggest the following: Overall, prior to 2008, more Republicans tended to vote early. In 2008, it was Democrats who voted early. We have to see 2010 will be a continuation of 2008 or a reversion to previous elections.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Another important factor is the number of early votes. For high early voting states like Oregon and Washington, essentially ALL votes will be cast early. In other states that require an excuse to vote absentee, the early voting electorate will be much smaller, and have a partisan character more similar to pre-2008.

12:31 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] Are black voters going to turn out for Obama like they did in 2008? Why or why not? How big of a difference do you think this will make?

12:31 Michael McDonald: Since we started surveying, pollsters have found that midterm electorates -- compared to presidential electorates -- tend to be older, wealthier, better educated, and composed of fewer minorities. Sometimes Democrats can overcome this hurdle, as they did in 2006, of course. It would be highly unusual for African-Americans to vote at the same rate as they did in 2008. In some key races, in states with large minority populations, lowered levels of minority voting could be a critical determinant to the outcome.

12:32 [Comment From tim: ] Do the polls accurately reflect the relative turnout of Democrats, GOP and Independents?

12:33 Michael McDonald: Pollsters try as best they can. They try to forecast who is likely to vote by various methods that are not consistent across polling firms. So, this is as much as art as a science. There are a number of factors that may further affect the partisan composition of polls, such as if people are interviewed by live interviewers or automatically or whether or not cell phones are interviewed.

12:34 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] When Republican pundits like Karl Rove predict gains of 60 or so seats in the House, does that help or hurt them (in terms of making Republicans complacent and driving Democrats to the polls)?

12:36 Michael McDonald: One of the big questions in this election is the relative effects of enthusiasm versus voter mobilization. Republicans are hoping the enthusiasm gap will help them to victory, while Democrats are banking on their organization to GOTV. So far as I can tell, neither side has a distinct edge yet.

12:37 [Comment From Casey (DC): ] I have a question about the margin of error. Let's say candidate A has been consistently polling a point above candidate B, with a 3% margin of error. Is the fact that A has beaten B in all recent polls statistically significant, even with a margin of error? That is, wouldn't it be misleading to claim that A and B are tied (due to the margin of error) since A has been beating B consistently in the same poll, even by just a point? If they're truly tied, wouldn't we see A beating B half the time and B beating A the other half??

12:41 Michael McDonald: To quickly review, the MoE is determined by the number of respondents to a survey, and it does not linearly decline as the number of respondents increases [it declines by a factor of 1/sqrt(# of respondents)]. Suppose you have two polls with 1,000 persons each, then. You may treat them as two polls of 2,000. So, the MoE would decline, but it may not decline as much as you might think. Further, as I describe above, different pollsters use different techniques to create likely voter screens (and many other survey issues), so the polls themselves are not entirely comparable.

12:42 Michael McDonald: As a general rule, I like averaging polls and looking at trends among the same pollster. If all the polls are moving in the same direction, I tend to believe that a trend is real and not just statistical noise.

12:43 Michael McDonald: Finally (I know a long answer!): never trust a single poll. Unfortunately, the media tend to report their poll, or a surprising poll, and disregard others.

12:43 [Comment From Jazziette Devereaux (AZ): ] Do you think that early voting can prevent voters from learning facts about candidates that are presented in the feverish last two weeks of the election?

12:44 Michael McDonald: My favorite example is a John Edwards voter who was upset in 2008 that he had cast his vote before he dropped out of the race.

12:46 Michael McDonald: Early voting has certainly changed campaign dynamics. No longer can an opponent release the October surprise the last week. Their opponent gets a chance to respond. And it makes elections more expensive since campaigns need to be active throughout the entire election period. So, there are pluses and minuses.

12:46 [Comment From Mark, Greenbelt: ] Is it your feeling that early voting favors one party over another generally, or is it all case-by-case?

12:48 Michael McDonald: Prior to 2008, more Republicans voted early. In 2010, more Democrats voted early. So, far more Democrats are voting early in 2008, so it may be that 2008 was a watershed election for early voting. Still, in a state-by-state basis, Republicans tend to do better among early voters in states that require an excuse to vote an absentee ballot (early voting rates are much lower, too!).

12:48 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] How do you think negative campaigning impacts turnout?

12:50 Michael McDonald: It used to be that people thought negative campaigning decreased turnout, but since then, numerous studies have shown it increases turnout. People are apt to be interested in slowing down and watching the accident on the side of the road. The media certainly enjoy covering the most negative campaigns, too.

12:50 [Comment From Malcolm, DC: ] Do you have any stats about early voting so far, and can you draw any conclusions?

12:50 Michael McDonald: They are here. So far, over 2 million people have already voted!

12:52 [Comment From Borys Ortega: ] How do you see the Obama support base (liberals, young people, etc) in terms of enthusiasm?

12:52 Seung Min Kim: And in addition to that, it seems like the White House and Democrats are doing a lot more outreach to young voters, with the MTV/BET town halls and the large rallies at universities. Do you think that will have any effect, considering young people have a low turnout rate for midterm elections?

12:53 Michael McDonald: Since we began surveying, polls consistently show that young people, minorities, the poor and uneducated tend to vote at lower rates -- perhaps the most ironic thing about this election is that the people most affected by the economic downturn are the least likely to vote.

12:55 Michael McDonald: The Democrats need to counter the Republican enthusiasm by expanding the electorate. Their strategy is to do voter mobilization targeted at the low propensity midterm voters, like the youth. We will again have to see how effective the Democrat's mobilization will be compared to the Republican's enthusiasm.

12:55 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Has there been any correlation between the level and campaign spending (especially on advertising) and the results?

12:57 Michael McDonald: A funny statistic is that the more an incumbent spends, the worse they do. This is because they are spending to counter a threat from a viable challenger. This is why this is one of the most difficult questions to answer -- surprisingly. We do not know the marginal effect of another dollar spent because the other campaign is also spending money.

12:57 [Comment From Sally: ] There was a flap this week about Univision airing ads that seek to depress Hispanic voter turnout. How common is that practice?

12:59 Michael McDonald: Voter suppression targeted at minorities has a long and ignoble history in American politics. Generally, I think everyone should vote since democracy works best when its citizens are engaged. This particular episode may ultimately backfire since it may rile up Nevada Latinos in a campaign that has had many racial overtones.

1:00 [Comment From Drew C.: ] What's your evaluation of early vote-by-mail, vs. in-person voting? Are both being done well?

1:00 Michael McDonald: In 2008, approximately 500,000 mail ballots were rejected. These were people who thought they voted by their vote did not count.

1:02 Michael McDonald: Why does this happen? People do not follow the procedures properly -- the return the ballot in the wrong envelope, they do not sign the envelope, etc. I do like California's method of allowing voters to drop their ballots off on election day at their polling places. This allows poll workers to check that the voter followed procedures.

1:03 Michael McDonald: An advantage of in-person early voting is that these problems do not occur, and their is a chance for a voter and election administrators to fix any problems, such as a first time voter forgetting to bring mandatory ID.

1:03 [Comment From Nick, DC: ] Along the lines of what Sally was asking about, we hear a lot about voter suppression, and we also hear a lot about alleged voter fraud. Are either of them really very common? And are voting machines more subject to tampering than the old paper ballots?

1:05 Michael McDonald: Vote fraud -- someone actually intentionally casting an illegal vote -- is extremely rare. When it happens, it tend to happen among mail ballots. Although there are potentially security flaws with electronic machines, there is little evidence of tampering (of course, that may be because there is no way to check!).

1:06 [Comment From Peter G.: ] If you could make one voting reform nationwide to make the system work better, what would it be?

1:08 Michael McDonald: Universal voter registration. There is plenty of evidence that our system of requiring voters to register themselves does not work well. Just about every other advanced democracy registers their own voters. In states with Election Day registration, turnout is much higher (5 to 7 percentage points). So, not only would we increase turnout, but we would get third party organizations like the now-defunct ACORN our of the business of registering voters.

1:09 [Comment From Ben Griffiths: ] You said incumbents fare worse when they spend more. is the same true of challengers? I'm thinking this year of Sharron Angle's $14 million in Nevada. Is it even possible to spend that much in the time left?

1:10 Michael McDonald: The spending in Nevada is tremendous. Despite that likely about half the voters will have already voted by Election Day -- Nevada is a high turnout state -- I think the campaigns will continue spending to the end since the election appears to be going down to the wire.

1:11 Michael McDonald: As for your first question, there is a point where a challenger spends enough money to become viable, which triggers a response in spending from an incumbent.

1:11 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Is overall turnout higher in states that allow early voting?

1:13 Michael McDonald: I testified to the U.S. Senate that I believe the answer is yes, though the turnout effects are a modest one to two points in presidential elections. There are studies that find big turnout increases in non-presidential elections. Indeed, the very first usage of all-mail ballot elections was in local jurisdictions that needed to meet threshold turnout rates to pass local bond measures.

1:13 [Comment From Nancy: ] Which party gets the early bragging rights?

1:14 Michael McDonald: So far, Democrats have jack rabbited out of the starting line in most states where we have a clue of which party's registrants are voting early. Nevada is an interesting departure, where Democrats have a lead, but it is not as great as 2008.

1:14 [Comment From Carson P.: ] One of your Brookings colleagues - Bill Galston - has proposed the idea of mandatory voting, like they do in Australia. Could that work here? Is it a good idea?

1:15 Michael McDonald: Good luck trying to convince Americans that they will be fined if they do not vote. I do not think this is practical for the U.S., though it obviously increases turnout.

1:15 [Comment From Don: ] What are the prospects for Lisa Murkowski come election day? Do you think she has a realistic shot at beating Joe Miler?

1:16 Michael McDonald: The polls are close. I think it is anyone's game in Alaska. In fact, I wrote an op-ed with my co-author Seth McKee, which was published at Politico today.

1:16 [Comment From Greg Dworkin: ] Thanks for all your hard work on this! How 'institutionalized' do you see the early vote by the parties? are they incorporating early voting as part of GOTV or are they behind in realizing so many people vote early these days?

1:19 Michael McDonald: As I document with another co-author -- Tom Schaller -- the Democrats created a strong early voting GOTV organization in 2008, and Republicans only belatedly tried to mobilize their voters to vote early. We will have to see how well Democrats will roll over this organization to 2010. Eventually, I believe the Republicans will have to build as strong as an organization. Early voting allows a party to mobilize over a longer period of time.

1:19 [Comment From Mary H. Hager, PhD: ] Please clarify polling methodology. Who is reached; who is not. The role of technology (email, telephonic, etc.) in defining the subpopulation for polling data.

1:20 Michael McDonald: That is quite a tall order for a chat :) We discuss many of these issues on Pollster -- which now has a home in the politics section of Huffington Post (I also blog at Pollster).

1:21 [Comment From Don (Ossning, NY): ] Does Christine O'Donnell have a chance in Delaware?

1:21 Michael McDonald: No.

1:21 [Comment From Geoffrey V.: ] Over the years, I've gotten the sense that campaigns are moving faster, that there are more undecided voters and that many voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. Is that supported by the data?

1:23 Michael McDonald: Well, given the tremendous increase of early voting from 20% in 2004 to 30% in 2008, it appears that many voters are making up their minds sooner, not later. Still, in a midterm election, the rule has generally been that people tend to hold their ballots longer because they do not have as much information about the candidates. It appears that this election may break that previous pattern.

1:23 [Comment From Joan: ] Do you think compromise will come back to Congress after the midterms?

1:24 Michael McDonald: No. Historically, we still have a ways to go before we reach the highest levels of polarization in our politics observed in the late 19th century.

1:24 [Comment From Al Amundson, ND: ] It seems sometimes that pollsters are "surprised" by wins. Polling is so scientific these days, and there's so much money behind it -- how often does a real surprise actually occur?

1:25 Michael McDonald: Surprises more often occur in primary elections, where the electorate is difficult to predict and information is fluid. I do not expect we will be greatly surprised by the 2010 election outcomes.

1:25 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Do you think that even with early voting, people just want to get it over with, go in to vote and make up their minds while they read the ballot?

1:27 Michael McDonald: Want the campaigns to stop bugging you? Vote early if you can. Election officials track who has a mail ballot in hand and who has voted, and they share this information with the campaigns.

1:27 [Comment From Bert C.: ] How is Sharron Angle still holding on in Nevada even after her numerous public gaffes?

1:27 Michael McDonald: The economic crisis has hit Nevada VERY hard (and I don't often write in caps!).

1:28 [Comment From Peggy: ] What role do you think the Tea Party will play in future elections? Is this a one-off movement or something more serious in American politics?

1:30 Michael McDonald: Shameless plug: see my Politico op-ed. A conservative/populist movement is nothing new to American politics. At least in the short run, I expect the tea party to continue to be influential, especially if Republicans take the House -- I do not expect they will take the Senate as of today. Victories will further embolden the activists.

1:31 Michael McDonald: Thanks to everyone for your questions. Sorry I could not answer them all!

1:31 Seung Min Kim: And that's it for today. Thanks for all the great questions as we count down the days until Election Day. And thanks to Michael for his insightful answers!

Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Analysis of dozens of publicly created redistricting plans shows that map-making technology can improve political representation and detect a gerrymander.  In 2012, President Obama won the vote in Ohio by three percentage points, while Republicans held a 13-to-5 majority in Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. House. After redistricting in 2013, Republicans held 12 of Ohio’s House seats while Democrats held four. As is typical in these races, few were competitive; the average margin of victory was 32 points. Is this simply a result of demography, the need to create a majority-minority district, and the constraints traditional redistricting principles impose on election lines—or did the legislature intend to create a gerrymander?

Crowd-Sourced Redistricting Maps

In the Ohio elections, we have a new source of information that opens a window into the legislature’s choice: Large numbers of publicly created redistricting plans.

During the last round of redistricting, across the country thousands of people in over a dozen states created hundreds of legal redistricting plans. Advances in information technology and the engagement of grassroots reform groups made these changes possible. To promote these efforts we created the DistrictBuilder open redistricting platform and many of these groups used this tool to create their plans.

Over the last several years, we have used the trove of information produced by public redistricting to gain insight into the politics of representation. In previous work that analyzed public redistricting in Virginia^[1], and in Florida^[2], we discovered that members of the public are capable of creating legal redistricting plans that outperform those maps created by legislatures in a number of ways.

Public redistricting in Ohio shows something new—the likely motives of the legislature. This can be seen through using information visualization methods to show the ways in which redistricting goals can be balanced (or traded-off) in Ohio , revealing the particular trade-offs made by the legislature.

The figure below, from our new research paper^[3], shows 21 plots—each of which compares legislative and publicly-created plans using a pair of scores—altogether covering seven different traditional and representational criteria. A tiny ‘A’ shows the adopted plan. The top-right corner of each mini-plot shows the best theoretically possible score. When examined by itself, the legislative plan meets a few criteria: it minimizes population deviation, creates an expected majority-minority seat, and creates a substantial majority of districts that would theoretically be competitive in an open-seat race in which the statewide vote was evenly split.

Figure 1: Pairwise Congressional Score Comparisons (Scatterplots) - Standardized Scores

In previous rounds of redistricting, empirical analysis would stop here—unless experts were called in to draw alternative plans in litigation. However, the large number of public plans now available allows us to see other options, plans the legislature could readily have created had it desired to do so. Comparison of the adopted plans and public plans reveal the weakness of the legislature’s choice. Members of the public were able to find plans that soundly beat the legislative plan on almost every pair of criteria, including competitive districts.

So why was the adopted plan chosen? Information visualization can help here, as well, but we need to add another criterion—partisan advantage:

Pareto Frontier: Standard Criteria vs. Democratic Surplus

When we visualize the number of expected Democratic seats that was likely to result from each plan, and compare this to the other score, we can see that the adopted plan is the best at something— producing Republican seats.

Was Ohio gerrymandered? Applying our proposed gerrymandering detection method, the adopted plans stands in high contrast to the public sample of plans, even if the overall competition scoring formula is slightly biased towards the Democrats, as strongly biased towards the Republicans on any measure of partisan fairness. Moreover analyzing the tradeoffs among redistricting criteria illuminate empirically demonstrates what is often suspected, but is typically impossible to demonstrate—that had the legislature desired to improve any good-government criterion—it could have done so, simply by sacrificing some partisan advantage. In light of this new body of evidence, the political intent of the legislature is clearly displayed.

However, when politics and technology mix, beware of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”^[4] Indeed there is an unexpected and hopeful lesson on reform revealed by the public participation that was enabled by new technology. The public plans show that, in Ohio, it is possible to improve the expected competitiveness, and to improve compliance with traditional districting principles such as county integrity, without threatening majority-minority districts simply by reducing partisan advantage—this is a tradeoff we should gladly accept.

Policy makers at all levels, federal and state and local governments, are depositing great faith in innovation as a driver of economic growth and job creation. In the knowledge economy, universities have been called to play a central role as knowledge producers. Universities are actively seeking to accommodate those public demands and many have engaged an ongoing review of their educational programs and their research portfolios to make them more attuned to industrial needs. Technology transfer is a function that universities are seeking to make more efficient in order to better engage with the economy.

By law, universities can elect to take title to patents from federally funded research and then license them to the private sector. For years, the dominant model of technology transfer has been to market university patents with commercial promise to prospect partners in industry. Under this model, very few universities have been able to command high licensing fees while the vast majority has never won the lottery of a “blockbuster” patent. Most technology transfer offices are cost centers for their universities.

However, upon further inspection, the winners of this apparent lottery seem to be an exclusive club. Over the last decade only 37 universities have shuffled in the top 20 of the licensing revenue ranking. What is more, 5 of the top 20 were barely covering the expenses of their tech transfer offices; the rest were not even making ends meet.[i] It may seem that the blockbuster patent lottery is rigged. See more detail in my Brookings report.

That appearance is due to the fact that landing a patent of high commercial value is highly dependent on the resources available to universities. Federal research funding is a good proxy variable to measure those resources. Figure 1 below shows side by side federal funding and net operating income of tech transfer offices. If high licensing revenues are a lottery; then it is one in which only universities with the highest federal funding can participate. Commercial patents may require a critical mass of investment to build the capacity to produce breakthrough discoveries that are at the same time mature enough for the private investors to take an interest.

Figure 1. A rigged lottery?

High federal research funding is the ticket to enter the blockbuster patent lottery

Source: Author elaboration with AUTM data (2013) [ii]

But now, let’s turn onto another view of the asymmetry of resources and licensing revenues of  universities; the geographical dimension. In Figure 2 we can appreciate the degree of dispersion (or concentration) of both, federal research investment and licensing revenue, across the states. It is easy to recognize the well-funded universities on the East and West coast receiving most of federal funds, and it is easy to observe as well that it is around the same regions, albeit more scattered, that licensing revenues are high.

If policymakers are serious about fostering innovation, it is time to discuss the asymmetries of resources among universities across the nation. Licensing revenues is a poor measure of technology transfer activity, because universities engage in a number of interactions with the private sector that do not involve patent licensing contracts. However, this data hints at the larger challenge: If universities are expected to be engines of growth for their regions and if technology transfer is to be streamlined, federal support must be allocated by mechanisms that balance the needs across states. This is not to suggest that research funding should be reallocated from top universities to the rest; that would be misguided policy. But it does suggest that without reform, the engines of growth will not roar throughout the nation, only in a few places.

Figure 2. Tech Transfer Activites Depend on Resources

Bubbles based on Metropolitan Statistical Areas and propotional to size of the variable

On March 4, President Obama submitted to Congress his 2015 budget request. Keeping with the spending cap deal agreed last December with Congress, the level of federal R&D will remain flat; and, when discounted by inflation, it is slightly lower. The requested R&D amount for 2015 is $135.4 billion, only $1.7 billion greater than 2014. If we discount from this 1.2% increase the expected inflation of 1.7% we are confronting a 0.5% decline in real terms.

Reaction of the Research Community

The litany of complaints has started. The President’s Science and Technology Advisor, John Holdren said to AAAS: “This budget required a lot of tough choices. All of us would have preferred more." The Association of American Universities, representing 60 top research universities, put out a statement declaring that this budget does “disappointingly little to close the nation’s innovation deficit,” so defined by the gap between the appropriate level of R&D investment and current spending.

What’s more, compared to 2014, the budget request has kept funding for scientific research roughly even but it has reallocated about $250 million from basic to applied research (see Table 1). Advocates of science have voiced their discontent. Take for instance the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology that has called the request a “disappointment to the research community” because the President’s budget came $2.5 billion short of their recommendations.

The President’s Research and Development Budget 2015

Source: OMB Budget 2015

These complaints are fully expected and even justified: each interest group must defend their share of tax-revenues. Sadly, in times of austerity, these protestations are toothless. If they were to have any traction in claiming a bigger piece of the federal discretionary pie, advocates would have to make a comparative case showing what budget lines must go down to make room for more R&D. But that line of argumentation could mean suicide for the scientific community because it would throw it into direct political contest with other interests and such contests are rarely decided by the merits of the cause but by the relative political power of interest groups. The science lobby is better off issuing innocuous hortatory pronouncements rather than picking up political fights that it cannot win.

Thus, the R&D slice is to remain pegged to the size of the total budget, which is not expected to grow, in the coming years, more than bonsai. The political accident of budget constraints is bound to change the scientific enterprise from within, not only in terms of the articulation of merits—which means more precise and compelling explanations for the relative importance of disciplines and programs—but also in terms of a shrewd political contest among science factions.

Wouldn’t it be great if complex social problems could be solved by technology? Alvin Weinberg suggested in 1967 that technical engineering could work better than social engineering; the argument advocated quick fixes to the most urgent problems of humanity at least to alleviate pain while more complete solutions were worked out. However controversial was this idea, our reliance on technology has only increased since then. Still, over the same period, we have also come to appreciate better the unanticipated consequences of technological advancement. In light of our experience leaping forward as well as our tripping and tumbling along the way, we should make two considerations in designing a technological fix.

Consideration 1: Serious attention to unwanted consequences

A consideration of first-order is the study of unwanted effects and tradeoffs introduced by the technology. Take for instance nanoparticles—particles in the range of one to a hundred nanometers—that enable new properties in materials in which they are mixed; for instance, maintaining permeability in fine-particle filtration to make available inexpensive water purification devices for vulnerable populations. Once these nano-enabled filters reach the end of their usable life and are discarded, those minuscule particles could be released in the environment and exponentially increase the toxicity of the resulting waste.

No less important than health and environmental effects are social, economic, and cultural consequences. Natural and social sciences are thus partners in the design of this kind of technological solution and transdisciplinary research is needed to improve our understanding of the various dimensions relevant to these projects. What is more, the incremental choices that set a particularly technology along a developmental pathway demand a different kind of knowledge because those choices are not merely technical, they involve values and preferences.

Consideration 2: Stakeholder engagement

But whose values and preferences matter? Surely everyone with a stake in the problem the fix is trying to solve will want to answer that question. If tech fixes are meant to address a specific social problem, those who will live with the consequences must have a say in the development of that solution. This prescription does not imply doing away with the current division of labor in technological development completely. Scientists and engineers need a degree of autonomy to work productively. Yet, input from and participation by stakeholders must occur far in advance of the completion of the development process because along the way a host of questions arise as to what trade-offs are acceptable. Non-experts are perfectly capable of answering questions about their values and preferences.

The market system provides to some extent this kind of check for technologies advancing incrementally. In an ideal market scenario, one of high competition, the stakeholders on the demand side vote with their wallets, and companies refine their products to gain market share. But the development of a technological fix is neither incremental nor distributed in that manner. It is generally concentrated in a few hands and it is, by design, disruptive and revolutionary. That’s why stakeholders must have a say in key developmental decisions so as to calibrate carefully those technologies to the values and preferences of the very people they intend to help.

Translating these considerations into policy

The federal government first funded in 1989 a program for the analysis of Ethical, Legal, Social implications (ELSI) within the Human Genome Project. The influence this program had in the direction and key decisions of the HGP was at best modest; rather, it practically institutionalized a separation between the hard science and the understanding of human and social dimensions of the science.[i]  By the time the National Nanotechnology Initiative was launched in 1999, some ELSI-type programs sought to breach the separation. With grants from the National Science Foundation, two centers for the study of nanotechnology in society were established at the University of California Santa Barbara and Arizona State University. CNS-UCSB and CNS-ASU have become hubs for research on the governance of technological development that integrate the technical, social, and human dimensions. One such effort is a pilot program of real-time technology assessment (RTTA) that achieved a more robust engagement with the various stakeholders of emerging nanotechnologies (see citizens tech-forum) and tested interventions at several points in the research and development of nanotechnologies to integrate concerns from the social sciences and humanities (see socio-technical integration). Building upon those experiences, the future of federal funding of technological fixes must include ELSI analyses more like the aforementioned RTTA program, that contrary to being an addendum to technical programs are fully integrated in the decision structure of research and development efforts.

Whenever emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing, synthetic biology, big data, or climate engineering are considered as the kernel of a technological fix, developers must understand that engineering the artifact itself does not suffice. An effective solution requires also the careful analysis of unwanted effects and a serious effort for stakeholder engagement, lest the solution be worse than the problem.

An academic-industrial partnership published last January in the prestigious journal Nature the results of the development of antibiotic teixobactin. The reported work is still at an early preclinical stage but it is nevertheless good news. Over the last decades the introduction of new antibiotics has slowed down nearly to a halt and over the same period we have seen a dangerous increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Such is the magnitude of the problem that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. government. Accepting several recommendations presented by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in their comprehensive report, the Obama Administration issued last September an Executive Order establishing an interagency Task Force for combating antibiotic resistant bacteria and directing the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) to establish an Advisory Council on this matter. More recently the White House issued a strategic plan to tackle this problem.

Etiology of antibiotic resistance

Infectious diseases have been a major cause of morbidity and mortality from time immemorial. The early discovery of sulfa drugs in the 1930s and then antibiotics in the 1940s significantly aided the fight against these scourges. Following World War II society experienced extraordinary gains in life expectancy and overall quality of life. During that period, marked by optimism, many people presumed victory over infectious diseases. However, overuse of antibiotics and a slowdown of innovation, allowed bacteria to develop resistance at such a pace that some experts now speak of a post-antibiotic era.

The problem is manifold: overuse of antibiotics, slow innovation, and bacterial evolution.

The overuse of antibiotics in both humans and livestock also facilitated the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Responsibility falls to health care providers who prescribed antibiotics liberally and patients who did not complete their prescribed dosages. Acknowledging this problem, the medical community has been training physicians to avoid pressures to prescribe antibiotics for children (and their parents) with infections that are likely to be viral in origin. Educational efforts are also underway to encourage patients to complete their full course of every prescribed antibiotic and not to halt treatment when symptoms ease. The excessive use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is perhaps less manageable because it affects the bottom line of farm operations. For instance, the FDA reported that even though famers were aware of the risks, antibiotics use in feedstock increased by 16 percent from 2009 to 2012.

The development of antibiotics—perhaps a more adequate term would be anti-bacterial agents—indirectly contributed to the problem by being incremental and by nearly stalling two decades ago. Many revolutionary innovations in antibiotics were introduced in a first period of development that started in the 1940s and lasted about two decades. Building upon scaffolds and mechanisms discovered theretofore, a second period of incremental development followed over three decades, through to 1990s, with roughly three new antibiotics introduced every year. High competition and little differentiations rendered antibiotics less and less profitable and over a third period covering the last 20 years pharmaceutical companies have cut development of new antibiotics down to a trickle.

The misguided overuse and misuse of antibiotics together with the economics of antibiotic innovation compounded the problem taking place in nature: bacteria evolves and adapts rapidly.

Current policy initiatives

The PCAST report recommended federal leadership and investment to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria in three areas: improving surveillance, increasing the longevity of current antibiotics through moderated usage, and picking up the pace of development of new antibiotics and other effective interventions.

To implement this strategy PCAST suggested an oversight structure that includes a Director for National Antibiotic Resistance Policy, an interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria, and an Advisory Council to be established by the HHS Secretary. PCAST also recommended increasing federal support from $450 million to $900 million for core activities such as surveillance infrastructure and development of transformative diagnostics and treatments. In addition, it proposed $800 million in funding for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support public-private partnerships for antibiotics development.

The Obama administration took up many of these recommendations and directed their implementation with the aforementioned Executive Order. More recently, it announced a National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria to implement the recommendations of the PCAST report. The national strategy has five pillars: First, slow the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria by decreasing the abusive usage of antibiotics in health care as well as in farm animals; second, establish national surveillance efforts that build surveillance capability across human and animal environments; third, advance development and usage of rapid and innovative diagnostics to provide more accurate care delivery and data collection; forth, seek to accelerate the invention process for new antibiotics, other therapeutics and vaccines across all stages, including basic and applied research and development; finally, emphasize the importance of international collaboration and endorse the World Health Organization Action Plan to address antimicrobial resistance.

University-Industry partnerships

Therefore, an important cause of our antibiotic woes seems to be driven by economic logic. On one hand, pharmaceutical companies have by and large abandoned investment in antibiotic development; competition and high substitutability have led to low prices and in their financial calculation, pharmaceutical companies cannot justify new developmental efforts. On the other hand, farmers have found the use of antibiotics highly profitable and thus have no financial incentives to halt their use.

There is nevertheless a mirror explanation of a political character.

The federal government allocates about $30 billion for research in medicine and health through the National Institutes of Health. The government does not seek to crowd out private research investment; rather, the goal is to fund research the private sector would not conduct because the financial return of that research is too uncertain. Economic theory prescribes government intervention to address this kind of market failure. However, it is also government policy to privatize patents to discoveries made with public monies in order to facilitate their transfer from public to private organizations. An unanticipated risk of this policy is the rebalancing of the public research portfolio to accommodate the growing demand for the kind of research that feeds into attractive market niches. The risk is that the more aligned public research and private demand become, the less research attention will be directed to medical needs without great market prospects. The development of new antibiotics seems to be just that kind of neglected medical public need. If antibiotics are unattractive to pharmaceutical companies, antibiotic development should be a research priority for the NIH. We know that it is unlikely that Congress will increase public spending for antibiotic R&D in the proportion suggested by PCAST, but the NIH could step in and rebalance its own portfolio to increase antibiotic research. Either increasing NIH funding for antibiotics or NIH rebalancing its own portfolio, are political decisions that are sure to meet organized resistance even stronger than antibiotic resistance.

The second mirror explanation is that farmers have a well-organized lobby. It is no surprise that the Executive Order gingerly walks over recommendations for the farming sector and avoid any hint at an outright ban of antibiotics use, lest the administration is perceived as heavy-handed. Considering the huge magnitude of the problem, a political solution is warranted. Farmers’ cooperation in addressing this national problem will have to be traded for subsidies and other extra-market incentives that compensate for loss revenues or higher costs. The administration will do well to work out the politics with farmer associations first before they organize in strong opposition to any measure to curb antibiotic use in feedstock.

Addressing this challenge adequately will thus require working out solutions to the economic and political dimensions of this problem. Public-private partnerships, including university-industry collaboration, could prove to be a useful mechanism to balance the two dimensions of the equation. The development of teixobactin mentioned above is a good example of this prescription as it resulted from collaboration between the university of Bonn Germany, Northeastern University, and Novobiotic Pharmaceutical, a start-up in Cambridge Mass.

If the NIH cannot secure an increase in research funding for antibiotics development and cannot rebalance substantially its portfolio, it can at least encourage Cooperative Research and Development Agreements as well as university start-ups devoted to develop new antibiotics. In order to promote public-private and university-industry partnerships, policy coordination is advised. The nascent enterprises will be assisted greatly if the government can help them raise capital connecting them to venture funding networks or implementing a loan guarantees programs specific to antibiotics.  It can also allow for an expedited FDA approval which would lessen the regulatory burden. Likewise, farmers may be convinced to discontinue the risky practice if innovation in animal husbandry can effectively replace antibiotic use. Public-private partnerships, particularly through university extension programs, could provide an adequate framework to test alternative methods, scale them up, and subsidize the transition to new sustainable practices that are not financially painful to farmers.

Yikun Chi contributed to this post

More TechTank content available here

Technical change is advancing at a breakneck speed while the institutions that govern innovative activity slog forward trying to keep pace. The lag has created a need for reform in the governance of innovation. Reformers who focus primarily on the social benefits of innovation propose to unmoor the innovative forces of the market. Conversely, those who deal mostly with innovation’s social costs wish to constrain it by introducing regulations in advance of technological developments. In this paper, Walter Valdivia and David Guston argue for a different approach to reform the governance of innovation that they call "Responsible Innovation" because it seeks to imbue in the actors of the innovation system a more robust sense of individual and collective responsibility.

Responsible innovation appreciates the power of free markets in organizing innovation and realizing social expectations but is self-conscious about the social costs that markets do not internalize. At the same time, the actions it recommends do not seek to slow down innovation because they do not constrain the set of options for researchers and businesses, they expand it. Responsible innovation is not a doctrine of regulation and much less an instantiation of the precautionary principle. Innovation and society can evolve down several paths and the path forward is to some extent open to collective choice. The aim of a responsible governance of innovation is to make that choice more consonant with democratic principles.

Valdivia and Guston illustrate how responsible innovation can be implemented with three practical initiatives: 

1. Industry: Incorporating values and motivations to innovation decisions that go beyond the profit motive could help industry take on a long-view of those decisions and better manage its own costs associated with liability and regulation, while reducing the social cost of negative externalities. Consequently, responsible innovation should be an integral part of corporate social responsibility, considering that the latter has already become part of the language of business, from the classroom to the board room, and that is effectively shaping, in some quarters, corporate policies and decisions.
2. Universities and National Laboratories: Centers for Responsible Innovation, fashioned after the institutional reform of Internal Review Boards to protect human subjects in research and the Offices of Technology Transfer created to commercialize academic research, could organize existing responsible innovation efforts at university and laboratory campuses. These Centers would formalize the consideration of impacts of research proposals on legal and regulatory frameworks, economic opportunity and inequality, sustainable development and the environment, as well as ethical questions beyond the integrity of research subjects.
3. Federal Government: Federal policy should improve its protections and support of scientific research while providing mechanisms of public accountability for research funding agencies and their contractors. Demanding a return on investment for every research grant is a misguided approach that devalues research and undermines trust between Congress and the scientific community. At the same time, scientific institutions and their advocates should improve public engagement and demonstrate their willingness and ability to be responsive to societal concerns and expectations about the public research agenda. Second, if scientific research is a public good, by definition, markets are not effective commercializing it. New mechanisms to develop practical applications from federal research with little market appeal should be introduced to counterbalance the emphasis the current technology transfer system places on research ready for the market. Third, federal innovation policy needs to be better coordinated with other federal policy, including tax, industrial, and trade policy as well as regulatory regimes. It should also improve coordination with initiatives at the local and state level to improve the outcomes of innovation for each region, state, and metro area.

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NASA’s Asteroid Initiative encompasses efforts for the human exploration of asteroids—as well as the Asteroid Grand Challenge—to enhance asteroid detection capabilities and mitigate their threat to Earth. The human space flight portion of the initiative primarily includes the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is a proposal to put an asteroid in orbit of the moon and send astronauts to it. The program originally contemplated two alternatives for closer study: capturing a small 10m diameter asteroid versus simply recovering a boulder from a much larger asteroid. Late in March, NASA offered an update of its plans. It has decided to retrieve a boulder from an asteroid near Earth’s orbit—candidates are the asteroids 2008 EV5, Bennu, and Itokawa—and will place the boulder on the moon’s orbit to further study it.

This mission will help NASA develop a host of technical capabilities. For instance, Solar Electric Propulsion uses solar electric power to charge atoms for spacecraft propulsion—in the absence of gravity, even a modicum of force can alter the trajectory of a body in outer space. Another related capability under development is the gravity tractor, which is based on the notion that even the modest mass of a spacecraft can exert sufficient gravitational force over an asteroid to ever so slightly change its orbit. The ARM spacecraft mass could be further increased by its ability to capture a boulder from the asteroid that is steering clear of the Earth, enabling a test of how humans might prevent asteroid threats in the future. Thus, NASA will have a second test of how to deflect near-Earth objects on a hazardous trajectory. The first test, implemented as part of the Deep Impact Mission, is a kinetic impactor; that is, crashing a spacecraft on an approaching object to change its trajectory.

The Asteroid Initiative is a partner of the agency’s Near Earth Object Observation (NEOO) program. The goal of this program is to discover and monitor space objects traveling on a trajectory that could pose the risk of hitting Earth with catastrophic effects. The program also seeks to develop mitigation strategies. The capabilities developed by ARM could also support other programs of NASA, such as the manned exploration of Mars.

NEOO has recently enjoyed an uptick of public support. It used to be funded at about $4 million in the 1990s and in 2010 was allocated a paltry $6 million. But then, a redirection of priorities—linked to the transition from the Bush to the Obama administrations—increased funding for NEOO to about $20 million in 2012 and $40 million in 2014—and NASA is seeking $50 million for 2015. It is clear that NASA officials made a compelling case for the importance of NEOO; in fact, what they are asking seems quite a modest amount if indeed asteroids pose an existential risk to life on earth. At the same time, the instrumental importance of the program and the public funds devoted to it beg the question as to whether taxpayers should have a say in the decisions NASA is making regarding how to proceed with the program.

NASA has done something remarkable to help answer this question.

Last November, NASA partnered with the ECAST network (Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology) to host a citizen forum assessing the Asteroid Initiative. ECAST is a consortium of science policy and advocacy organizations which specializes in citizen deliberations on science policy. The forum consisted of a dialogue with 100 citizens in Phoenix and Boston who learned more about the asteroid initiative and then commented on various aspects of the project.

The participants, who were selected to approximate the demographics of the U.S. population, were asked to assess mitigation strategies to protect against asteroids. They were introduced to four strategies: civil defense, gravity tractor, kinetic impactor, and nuclear blast deflection. As part of the deliberations, they were asked to consider the two aforementioned approaches to perform ARM. A consensus emerged about the boulder retrieval option primarily because citizens thought that option offered better prospects for developing planetary defense technologies.  This preference existed despite the excitement of capturing a full asteroid, which could potentially have additional economic impacts. The participants showed interest in promoting the development of mitigation capabilities at least as much as they wanted to protect traditional NASA goals such as the advancement of science and space flight technology. This is not surprising given that concerns about doomsday should reasonably take precedence over traditional research and exploration concerns.

NASA could have decided to set ARM along the path of boulder retrieval exclusively on technical merits, but having conducted a citizen forum, the agency is now able to claim that this decision is also socially robust, which is to say, is responsive to public values of consensus. In this manner, NASA has shown a promising method by which research mission federal agencies can increase their public accountability.

In the same spirit of responsible research and innovation, a recent Brookings paper I authored with David Guston—who is a co-founder of ECAST—proposes a number of other innovative ways in which the innovation enterprise can be made more responsive to public values and social expectations.

Kudos to NASA for being at the forefront of innovation in space exploration and public accountability.

The fiscal budget has become a casualty of political polarization and even functions that had enjoyed bipartisan support, like research and development (R&D), are becoming divisive issues on Capitol Hill. As a result, federal R&D is likely to grow pegged to inflation or worse, decline.

With the size of the pie fixed or shrinking, requests for R&D funding increases will trigger an inter-agency zero-sum game that will play out as pointless comparisons of agencies’ merit, or worse, as a contest to attract the favor of Congress or the White House. This insidious politics will be made even more so by the growing tendency of equating public accountability with the measurement of performance. Political polarization, tight budgets, and pressure for quantifiable results threaten to undermine the sustainability of public R&D. The situation begs the question: What can federal agencies do to deal with the changing politics of federal R&D?

In a new paper, Walter D. Valdivia and Benjamin Y. Clark apply punctuated equilibrium theory to examine the last four decades of federal R&D, both at the aggregate and the agency level. Valdivia and Clark observe a general upward trend driven by gradual increases. In turn, budget leaps or punctuations are few and far in between and do no appear to have lasting effects. As the politics of R&D are stirred up, federal departments and agencies are sure to find that proposing punctuations is becoming more costly and risky. Consequently, agencies will be well advised in securing stable growth in their R&D budgets in the long run rather than pushing for short term budget leaps.

While appropriations history would suggest the stability of R&D spending resulted from the character of the budget politics, in the future, stability will need the stewardship of R&D champions who work to institutionalize gradualism, this time, in spite of the politics.

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Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

Last month, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university inventions emerge from federal research grants, universities can also sue the infringers, but in those cases they would be testing the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of the patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should clarify that the predictor circuit, the blue-light diode, and the Kavcic detectors are not in that subset of patents. But even in they were, there is no indication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison would have exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. Today, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited their ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and their material interests are not those of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

This post originally appeared on the Center for Technology Innovation’s TechTank blog.

Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

This October, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university patented inventions emerge from federal research grants, infringement suits test the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal research grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities (or any other government research performers) to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should remark that UW’s predictor circuit resulted from grants from NSF and DARPA and there is no indication that the university exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. In fact, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited the universities’ ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and only a few universities sue for infringement. In taking that policy position, university associations are representing neither the interests nor the beliefs of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

Editor's Note: The post was corrected to state that UW’s predictor circuit did originate from federally funded research.

International development debates of the last four decades have ascribed ever greater importance to intellectual property rights (IPRs). There has also been a significant effort on the part of the U.S. to encourage its trade partners to introduce and enforce patent law modeled after American intellectual property law. Aside from a discussion on the impact of patents on innovation, there are some important consequences of international harmonization regarding the obduracy of the terms of trade agreements.

The position of the State Department on patents when negotiating trade agreements has consistently been one of defending stronger patent protection. However, the high-tech sector is under reorganization, and the most innovative industries today have strong disagreements about the value of patents for innovation. This situation begs the question as to why the national posture on patent law is so consistent in favor of industries such as pharmaceuticals or biotech to the detriment of software developers and Internet-based companies.

The State Department defends this posture, arguing that the U.S. has a comparative advantage in sectors dependent on patent protection. Therefore, to promote exports, our national trade policy should place incentives for partners to come in line with national patent law. This posture will become problematic when America’s competitive advantage shifts to sectors that find patents to be a hindrance to innovation, because too much effort will have already been invested in twisting the arm of our trade partners. It will be hard to undo those chapters in trade agreements particularly after our trade partners have taken pains in passing laws aligned to American law.

Related to the previous concern, the policy inertia effect and inflexibility applies to domestic policy as much as it does to trade agreements. When other nations adopt policy regimes following the American model, advocates of stronger patent protection will use international adoption as an argument in favor of keeping the domestic policy status quo. The pressure we place on our trade partners to strengthen patent protection (via trade agreements and other mechanisms like the Special 301 Report) will be forgotten. Advocates will present those trade partners as having adopted the enlightened laws of the U.S., and ask why American lawmakers would wish to change law that inspires international emulation. Innovation scholar Timothy Simcoe has correctly suggested that harmonization creates inflexibility in domestic policy. Indeed, in a not-too-distant future the rapid transformation of the economy, new big market players, and emerging business models may give policymakers the feeling that we are stuck in a patent policy rut whose usefulness has expired.

In addition, there are indirect economic effects from projecting national patent law onto trade agreements. If we assume that a club of economies (such as OECD) generate most of the innovation worldwide while the rest of countries simply adopt new technologies, the innovation club would have control over the global supply of high value-added goods and services and be able to preserve a terms-of-trade advantage. In this scenario, stronger patent protection may be in the interest of the innovation club to the extent that their competitive advantage remains in industries dependent of patent protection. But should the world economic order change and the innovation club become specialized in digital services while the rest of the world takes on larger segments of manufactures, the advantage may shift outside the innovation club. This is not a far-fetched scenario. Emerging economies have increased their service economy in addition to their manufacturing capacity; overall they are better integrated in global supply chains. What is more, these emerging economies are growing consumption markets that will become increasingly more relevant globally as they continue to grow faster than rich economies.

What is more, the innovation club will not likely retain a monopoly on global innovation for too long. Within emerging economies, another club of economies is placing great investments in developing innovative capacity. In particular, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa (and possibly Russia) have strengthened their innovation systems by expanding public investments in R&D and introducing institutional reforms to foster entrepreneurship. The innovation of this second club may, in a world of harmonized patent law, increase their competitive advantage by securing monopolistic control of key high-tech markets. As industries less reliant on patents flourish and the digital economy transforms US markets, an inflexibly patent policy regime may actually be detrimental to American terms of trade.

I should stress that these kind of political and economic effects of America’s posture on IPRs in trade policy are not merely speculative. Just as manufactures displaced the once dominant agricultural sector, and services in turn took over as the largest sector of the economy, we can fully expect that the digital economy—with its preference for limited use of patents—will become not only more economic relevant, but also more politically influential. The tensions observed in international trade and especially the aforementioned considerations merit revisiting the rationale for America’s posture on intellectual property policy in trade negotiations.

Elsie Bjarnason contributed to this post.

As President Obama prepares to give the final State of the Union address of his presidency tonight, he’s promised to stay away from the technocrat’s laundry list of to-do’s. Instead, he’s expected to deliver a speech that will remind his fellow citizens of their ability to “come together as one American family.” It’s going to be a tough sell, especially when the citizens are terrified of outsiders and suspicious of one another.

Most of the fear and paranoia revolves around the Islamic State group. Although the group poses far less of a threat to the United States than to our allies and friends in Europe and the Middle East, it is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans—an immigrant, terrorist, cyber, WMD, genocidal threat rolled into one. Its name alone can be invoked to indict Obama’s national security and immigration policies—substantive criticisms are unnecessary.

[T]he Islamic State group...is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans.

Most of those fears are overblown, but the president will want to tackle them each of them in his speech if he intends to calm fears and bring people together. He’ll explain why taking in refugees is not just living up to American values but also smart counterterrorism. He’ll showcase evidence that the military campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East is bearing fruit. He’ll reassure Americans that the Islamic State can’t plant a skilled operative into this country and remind them that the best way to stop the unskilled lone wolf shooters inspired by the Islamic State is to close gun loop holes and monitor their behavior online before they act. He’ll demonstrate his commitment to blunting Islamic State recruitment, touting changes to how the government counters the Islamic State’s appeal online and in America’s big cities.

All of that is well and good, but it’s a bureaucrat’s (or think tanker’s) effort at reassuring the public. To truly succeed in mitigating America’s fears and bringing citizens together, our country’s leader has to acknowledge that their fears are real and explain what our enemies hope to gain by engendering them. While Americans’ fears may be overblown, they won’t be deflated by technocratic hot air.

Editors' Note: How can the U.S. government better counter ISIS propaganda? As the State Department overhauls its counter messaging program, Will McCants and Clint Watts examine what makes ISIS’s online magazine, Dabiq, so successful, and the obstacles to the U.S. government producing a publication that effective. This piece originally appeared on The Daily Beast.

The Obama administration attributes much of ISIS’s success at communicating to its technological savvy, which has elevated the group to a global media and terrorist phenomenon. The president has gone so far as to say that the Paris attackers were a “bunch of killers with good social media.”

Despite the praise heaped on the so-called Islamic State for its cutting-edge propaganda online, one of its most effective products is decidedly low tech. Dabiq, ISIS’s online news magazine, has a small but devoted readership that spans the globe. News of advances on the battlefield excite them—more evidence that God’s kingdom on earth has returned and grows. Stories of fighters inspire them—more models to emulate as they contemplate what role they can play in the divine drama unfolding.

Journalists and analysts read it with almost the same intensity as ISIS fans; the contents of each volume fill newspapers and think-tank reports soon after it’s released. And no wonder: the magazine clearly states the organization’s goals; provides news of its activities that advance those goals; showcases personal stories of the people engaged in the activities; and announces major developments in the organization’s fight against its enemies. It’s a wealth of information presented between two covers every few months.

Can you name a single U.S. government publication or online platform devoted to the anti-ISIS fight that is as informative or as widely-read as Dabiq? Is there anything that tells us what all these air sorties are for? Who’s fighting this fight on the ground? What advances the coalition has made and why we should we care? We couldn’t come up with one either.

That got us to thinking: why can’t the U.S. government publish something like Dabiq online? Lack of imagination isn’t the reason. A news magazine isn’t a very creative idea—Americans perfected the form, which ISIS copied. And if anything, folks inside the government have too many overly-imaginative ideas, most of them involving whiz-bang technology. If you’ve thought it, they’ve thought it. A social media campaign for youth to come up with ways to counter violent extremism? Check. Sock-puppetry? Check.

The only real obstacle impeding the U.S. government is itself. The executive branch’s complicated bureaucracy, legal strictures, and sensitivity to criticism from media and Congress make it tough to publish a Dabiq-style magazine. To see what we mean, let’s look at two of Dabiq’s regular features and see what would happen if the U.S. government tried to mimic them:

Attack Reports: Each issue of Dabiq details its attacks on its enemies. One entry in issue 12 chronicled ISIS’s efforts to capture an airbase in Dayr al-Zawr, Syria. Another described four suicide attacks on the Saudi-led coalition fighting southern Yemen. Pictures accompany most entries, some quite gruesome.

The U.S. government routinely writes these types of reports for internal consumption. But when they’re public—and thus under the scrutiny of Congress that holds the pursestrings and the media that holds the careerstrings—routine gives way to caution and quarreling.

If the president asks his government to write attack reports for the public, the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense will quarrel about who will take the lead in writing and publishing them. Then they and the intelligence agencies will quarrel over which reports should be included. Will this report counter the president’s insistence that we have no boots on the ground? Will that report make it look like our Iraqi partners aren’t carrying their weight? Does this one tell the enemy too much about our game plan? Does that picture make U.S. soldiers look too menacing? Will this report later be discredited by the media? Will these battlefield successes be reversed in the future? Does anyone know if another agency has said this or its opposite? Will anyone trust what we’re saying? Shouldn’t someone else be saying this?

When something finally slides off the serpentine conveyor belt months later, it will be a bland blob devoid of detail and relevance. Meanwhile, ISIS will have added twelve more volumes to its shelves.

Biographies of Fighters: Dabiq sometimes profiles its fighters, including the young men on the front lines dying for ISIS’s cause. The fighters tell their stories and explain their reasons for fighting. In issue 8, for example, there is a Q&A with the man who murdered a prominent politician in Tunisia. He explains why he did it and how it advances the greater goals of the Islamic State.

The United States military used to feature these sorts of stories, too—back when the American war in Iraq was a massive, overt affair. Now, that’s not the case. The identities of the Americans fighting in Syria and Iraq are a well-guarded secret because the government does not want them or their families to become targets. The government would also frown on them for nonchalantly talking about killing lest the American public get upset. And then there’s that boots on the ground thing.

Without personal stories, we’re left with drones buzzing in the sky, and buzz-cut officers droning through stale Pentagon briefings. The human cost on both sides is reduced to numbers on slides, which means Americans can’t appreciate the true costs of war and foreigners can’t appreciate the sacrifices Americans are making on their behalf.

Some readers might feel that the U.S. government should be constrained in these ways. They want the government to be sensitive to public opinion and exceedingly cautious when talking about war and violence. If so, they shouldn’t complain when the U.S. government explains its anti-ISIS fight in the vaguest possible terms—that’s the outcome of extreme caution compounded by bureaucratic bargaining on a mind-boggling scale. Others might feel we need to reform the way government does messaging. If so, don’t propose to change the system first. Rather, ask the system to perform a simple task like the one we’ve described and see where it breaks down. Then you’ll know what to fix.

Making a news magazine probably isn’t the high tech solution the government is looking for, at least judging by Friday’s pilgrimage of senior security officials to Silicon Valley and the revamping of State Department’s online counter messaging campaign. But if our byzantine, poll-sensitive government can’t do something so basic, it won’t perform better when it’s tasked with something more complicated no matter how much technology it uses.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up is Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argues that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

Aymenn al-Tamimi: There are a variety of ways to assess Islamic State (or ISIS) governance over its territories. One angle involves trying to talk to residents living within ISIS-controlled lands, and indeed this is the primary line of evidence Mara Revkin relies on in her piece assessing ISIS administration.

While oral testimony may produce some interesting observations on ISIS governance, it is also beset with difficulties in reliability and corroboration. The ISIS system of rule is a totalitarian dictatorship, on the lookout for anyone who could be deemed to be collaborating with the outside world. As such, residents may be reluctant to criticize, out of fear that they could be accused of leaking information harmful to ISIS. That can get a person disappeared or publicly executed. 

Last year, when I was speaking with a friend living in the western Anbar town of Rawa, he initially said that most residents preferred life under ISIS: 

“We are not content like before but I and most of the people here prefer living under the shade of the Islamic State, as no soldier comes upon our lands, and now I assure you that all the people of Rawa will fight in one rank against the [Iraqi] army if it tries to advance an inch because the army won’t have mercy on anyone…and this is the truth…and I give you knowledge of the sentiment among most of the people who were persecuted by the army but had committed no crime or fault, but we only lack [national grid] electricity.” 

At first glance, his sentiments seem quite understandable. Harassment, mass arrests, and disappearances in prisons of Iraqi Sunnis by the Baghdad government’s security forces were common grievances—maybe they have more weight than loss of access to public services like the national electricity grid, from which most areas under IS control have now been cut off. 

Yet in a subsequent conversation, in which I inquired about any publications ISIS had distributed in his area, the fear of ISIS became very apparent: 

“Brother, you know why I am cautious in giving you information: because the Internet is being monitored. And I want to know what you will do with it and whether this thing will harm the Dawla [ISIS], because after God Almighty and Exalted is He, we don’t have anything besides the Islamic State, and I fear having a [negative] effect on them.” 

Another resident of Rawa refused to discuss anything about life in the town, with the same concern about Internet communication being monitored by ISIS. 

These examples offer a glimpse into the challenges of understanding ISIS administration through local testimony. How can we be sure the testimony is not compromised on account of fear? It is of course possible to find people critical of ISIS living within its territories: for instance, a relative in Mosul told me a year ago that 90 percent of the city’s inhabitants prefer life before ISIS, but said fear prevents them from expressing their true feelings. But how does one even verify that claim? 

Cracks in the system

With clear shortcomings in oral testimony, I prefer to focus instead on internal ISIS documents to understand the evolution in governance—as well as problems facing ISIS that we don’t see in the endless streams of propaganda. To be sure, this method also has limitations: though I have managed to compile hundreds of documents so far, they likely constitute only a small fraction of the whole cache. Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture. 

Even so, the documents unearthed so far yield a number of important insights. The ISIS bureaucracy is ostensibly comprehensive and impressive, but it is clear that as time progresses, the state project is facing challenges due to pressure from its enemies. 

Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture.

For example, in mid-2015, the agricultural department issued a general notification urging people to conserve grain stocks on account of the “economic war” being waged by the coalition against ISIS, indicating that agricultural output in ISIS territories was in trouble. In addition, while ISIS makes no secret of its appeals for medical personnel to come to the caliphate, internal documents show that brain-drain is also a problem: multiple ultimatums have been issued, calling for medical professionals to return to ISIS lands or risk having their property confiscated. 

While ISIS would like to cultivate a new generation of professionals, the only real existing institution is Mosul University, which practically remains open only to Iraqi students. ISIS closed some departments on the grounds of contravening its ideology, and even those that remain open cannot function, likely owing to the wider issue of brain drain.

Documents also show great concern about the anti-ISIS coalition’s ability to launch airstrikes on high-profile targets. Worried about data security, the ISIS leadership increasingly attempts to restrict all broadcasting of information to its own channels. It has warned fighters and commanders not to open social media accounts or use mobiles, and recently banned satellite television.

Cash rules everything

Finally, for all the criticisms of the anti-ISIS coalition’s strategies, it is clear that they have significantly dented the group’s financial revenues. The Iraqi government no longer pays salaries of workers living under ISIS rule, airstrikes have hit ISIS-owned assets in the oil industry, Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken the key Syria-Turkey border point of Tel Abyad, and Turkey has tightened security on remaining border areas under ISIS control. 

As a result, ISIS has reduced expenditures and increased taxation on its populations. In Mosul, for instance, ISIS imposed all costs for printing textbooks on school students. From Raqqa province, a memo dating to November/December 2015 established a 50 percent pay cut for all fighters, regardless of rank. The latter pointed to “the exceptional circumstances” ISIS is facing (referring, no doubt, to financial troubles). This is particularly significant as a financial budget I obtained from Deir az-Zor province shows that military upkeep—primarily in the form of fighters’ salaries—can be reasonably estimated to account for two-thirds of ISIS expenditures. These pay cuts may exacerbate problems of military cohesion in ISIS’s ranks—evidenced by a month-long general amnesty issued in October 2015 for deserters, and the failures of mobilization efforts to stop the Assad regime and Iran from breaking the ISIS siege of Kweiris airbase in Aleppo province.

Bring the fight home

For all of these insights into internal challenges for the ISIS project, I deem the prospect of collapse from an internal revolt unlikely. It is evident that internal opponents of ISIS face a stifling environment, and no one to date has offered them an alternative model of governance. Any internal uprisings that do occur—such as the Sha’itat revolt in Deir az-Zor province back in 2014—have been put down with ruthless efficiency. From the economic side, the group’s financial difficulties are unlikely to translate into total collapse, as it’s impossible to completely seal off cash flow between ISIS and the outside world. 

All of this shows that it will be up to outside forces to take the fight against ISIS to its heartlands.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up was Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

This time, we’ve asked Aaron Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to weigh in with a historical perspective.

Aaron Zelin: Attempts by salafi-jihadis to create states or govern territory are not a new phenomenon. Even for the Islamic State (IS), this is its second attempt at establishing a state and governing territories it controls. What sets it apart this time is the level of planning, sophistication, and capabilities compared to ten years ago.

Unlike the prior pieces in this series, I hope to present a historical perspective on IS governance, since I do not think one can be separate from the other.

The first state

In October 2006—when the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was declared—the leader of al-Qaida in the Land of Two Rivers (better known as AQI), Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) pledged allegiance to the new self-declared leader of the faithful, Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi. In a January 2007 book, ISI’s Shaykh ‘Uthman ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi explains the rationale for declaring the state. In it, he also outlines the state’s responsibilities for areas it controls: prosecuting criminals and sinners, implementation of the hudud (fixed punishments in the Qur’an and Hadith), mediating and resolving conflicts, providing security, distributing food and relief, and selling oil and gas. 

Although it called itself a state, the Islamic State of Iraq controlled only small amounts of territory, for limited periods of time—in no small part because of the American military occupation, but also due to insurgent and tribal competition for power. It attempted to show a veneer of legitimacy by establishing a cabinet of ministries in April 2007 and September 2009. Because of ISI’s limitations, it was nearly impossible to resolve conflicts, provide security, distribute food and relief, or sell oil and gas. Instead, it fell back on mostly only instituting hisba (moral policing) activities and targeting enemies as murtadin (apostates) and therefore legitimate to target and kill. Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

ISI killed and kidnapped leaders from prior allies—such as the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other insurgent factions—because they were unwilling to pledge allegiance to al-Baghdadi. It required female residents to wear the niqab, burned down beauty salons and stores selling music, flogged individuals for drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, and banned barbers’ use of electric razors. ISI also banned positioning certain fruits next to one another at markets out of concerns over sexual innuendo, as well as banned the local bread (samun) and the use of ice. In town after town, this precipitated what eventually became known as the tribal sahwa, or awakening. That, along with the U.S. military surge in Iraq, tactically defeated ISI by 2009.

Towards a second state

Since ISI was only tactically and not strategically defeated, it used the American drawdown of troops that ended in December 2011, Sunni grievances with the Nouri al-Maliki regime in Baghdad, and most importantly the battlefield next door in Syria to rebuild its infrastructure and capabilities. As I noted in March 2013, a month before it changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS): “Through sectarian rhetoric, [ISI] will use the Syrian fight to try and gain more recruits in Iraq and redeem itself for its lost opportunity last decade.” Indeed it did. This time proved much different than a decade earlier. It also had a provisional position paper that outlined how it sought to take over territory and govern.

Prior to the infighting that began in January 2014 between ISIS and revolutionary, Islamist, and other jihadi factions in Syria, there was an understanding among the different insurgent forces against the Assad regime. As a consequence, ISIS was able to embed itself within the broader anti-Assad coalition even if other factions were wary of it—unlike now, when IS has pariah status. From April 2013 to January 2014, ISIS’s main focus was to present itself in a positive light to the Syrian population through da’wa (missionary) forums and by providing services. It also conducted softer moral policing, such as burning cigarettes or confiscating alcohol. But similar to a decade ago, it also killed other leaders from Syrian insurgent factions, prompting backlash. ISIS was pushed out of Latakia, Idlib, and parts of Aleppo governorates between January and March 2014. 

This led to ISIS’s independent consolidation of territory farther to the east in the Raqqa governorate and parts of Dair al-Zour governorate. It is also when more harsh punishments began to appear, such as cutting off hands for robbery or crucifying alleged apostates. In this period, ISIS also sought to appear as a state-like entity, showing off its various administrative departments including its da’wa offices, shariah courts, religious schools, police stations, and local municipalities, among others. It was an uneven process across its proto-wilayat (provinces) until its June 2014 declaration of the Caliphate, when ISIS changed its name again—to IS.

The second state

Since then, based on my review of thousands of IS media releases, a pattern emerged in IS attempts to expand, take over new territory, and consolidate its control. IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat. This governance model can equally be applied in its core territory of Iraq and Syria as well as various other provinces. It is far more advanced than its prior incarnations, let alone al-Qaida branches (the closest instance being al-Shabab in Somalia).

IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat.

My research demonstrates that IS state-building exhibits two stages: pre- or partial territorial control and full territorial control. Within these two categories are five phases of establishing control: intelligence, military, da’wa, hisba (consumer protection and moral policing), and governance. Although hisba would generally be considered part of IS’s governance apparatus, I separated the two—this helps distinguish the level of advancement and sophistication associated with meting out justice, versus that associated with actual services, administration, and economic activity, since the former is easier to implement than the latter. More details with specifics and case studies can be found here.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior. Further, depending on the date and the particular province, IS did live up to its own standards of governance. That’s not to legitimize it, but rather to understand it on its own terms. This increased efficacy illustrates the organization’s ability to learn from past experiences. It also suggests that IS may apply lessons learned as more of its governance plays out in areas outside of Iraq and Syria—especially in Libya, but possibly even in Yemen or Afghanistan in the future. New knowledge will sharpen IS’s thinking and continue its growth and evolution as well as shorten its learning curve.

Therefore, aspects of the IS model could shift in the future. Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Watch and learn

Similar to IS, al-Qaida is in the process of learning lessons from the governance experience of the ISI in the mid-2000s. It is also looking back on its first attempted cases of governance activities by its own branches in the past several years in Somalia, Yemen, Mali, and Syria. Unlike IS, al-Qaida is attempting to root itself into local insurgencies in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Mali, and not play a monopolizing role (at least for now). The second governance attempt by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is still in its infancy, but its performance will provide more answers about the evolution in al-Qaida’s thinking on governance and how it differs from IS’s second governance attempt. 

The establishment of jihadi governance projects are a new normal. For now, it’s clear that IS has set a higher standard when compared to its earlier attempt a decade ago and to al-Qaida’s present governance. But the question going forward is whether either IS’s or al-Qaida’s models (or both) will be able to self-sustain in the long-term as they continue to incorporate lessons learned.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance.

Now, we have Kamran Bokhari, a fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism, to argue that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Kamran Bokhari: Ascertaining the extent to which ISIS excels at governing requires, among other things, an understanding of its imperatives and capabilities. The most fundamental act of governance for any state is protecting its territory. With many of the world’s most powerful militaries now dedicating significant resources towards the Islamic State’s destruction, the group has its work cut out for it in this regard. Defending its current territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq (and expanding if and where possible) is the single most critical imperative for ISIS.

This is not to say that other aspects of governance, including those detailed by Mara Revkin, Aymenn al-Tamimi, and Aaron Zelin, are not priorities for ISIS. The polity erected by the transnational jihadist movement cannot hope to survive—much less expand—without the provision of essential services such as sanitation, utilities, healthcare, and education to its citizenry. However, ISIS can only focus so much on these functions when the areas it controls are under attack on multiple fronts. In the last few months, it has lost ground in certain areas—largely in Iraq—but its core turf in Syria remains intact. 

This resilience should sharpen the focus of U.S. and Western military and intelligence institutions. At present, analysts and policymakers focus too much on ISIS’s ideology and too little on its war-making tradecraft. Radicalization is necessary but not sufficient to produce violence—definitely not on the scale that ISIS has demonstrated. The geopolitical real estate directly under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq is about the size of the state of New York; if we include the swathes of land where it enjoys relative freedom of operation, it’s approximately as big as Great Britain. 

Defending such a wide expanse against ground assaults, airstrikes, special operations forces missions, as well as human and signals intelligence probes requires elaborate institutionalization. Aaron Zelin details how ISIS systematized bureaucratic structures between the fall of its first attempt at statehood (2006 to 2009) and its second incarnation (2011 to the present). During these periods, it crucially developed a multi-divisional conventional military and counter-intelligence. In addition to its primary need to defend its nascent state, the jihadist movement has spent most of its existence developing military and intelligence capabilities, which played a key role in its emergence as the most potent rebel force in post-Arab spring Syria. 

Where did ISIS leaders pick up their self-defense strategies? One answer is al-Qaida, though many analysts over-emphasize that linkage. ISIS leadership has also likely studied the rise and fall of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Run by the Afghan Taliban, the Emirate was the first and only contemporary jihadist movement to have established a state of any significance before ISIS. There are differences, of course. The Taliban emirate was based within the confines of the Afghan nation-state, and enjoyed active backing from Pakistan and other Gulf Arab states. Furthermore, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has denounced the movement founded by Mullah Mohammed Omar as a “deviant” entity. However, the experiences of the Afghan Taliban from 1996 to 2001 offer very valuable lessons for ISIS—all the more since the latter’s caliphate rejects national boundaries and lacks state sponsorship. 

Security first

ISIS leaders fear losing their nascent state in the face of growing economic and military pressures. They seek to avoid, in particular, the circumstances that allowed for the collapse of the Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks. Many have asked why ISIS would engage in transcontinental attacks in the West if its primary aim is the preservation of its polity. As Shadi Hamid has discussed, ISIS likely does not view its terrorist attacks like the one in Paris as undermining its state. I would actually argue that ISIS sees a U.S. ground intervention as only helping its cause. What it fears is a more complex approach from the Americans involving Syrian boots on the ground. 

Thus in many ways, ISIS’s caliphate today faces circumstances similar to the ones that the Taliban emirate did in late 2001. The U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban launched airstrikes, while intelligence and special operations forces supported an anti-Taliban militia coalition, the proverbial “boots on the ground.” Fast-forward 15 years, and the battlespace that ISIS finds itself in—though much more complex—has the same basic configuration. The ISIS leadership is now vigorously searching for ways to endure airstrikes, block intelligence efforts, and thwart special operations missions designed to take out critical leadership and infrastructure. 

Perhaps most pressing is the need to prevent the emergence of a critical mass of Kurdish and/or rival jihadist militias to whom ISIS could potentially lose significant tracts of land. In Afghanistan, anti-Taliban militiamen with U.S. support were able to stage a comeback from their bases in northern Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border, sweeping through Kabul and even seizing the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar. ISIS does not want to experience something similar to that, with Syrian rebel forces turning toward its territory in eastern Syria, especially now that they have run into serious problems in western parts of the county. There, regime forces backed by Russian aircraft are gaining the upper hand in critical places in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. U.S. strategy, for its part, seems to be focused not on the collapse of the Assad regime but rather in equipping rebel forces to take on ISIS. Some rebels may do so in the hope of garnering greater Western support. 

For these reasons, ISIS needs to ensure that both those in its own ranks as well as the people over whom it rules have little incentive to desert or rebel. Coercion helps, but only to a certain extent. The Afghan Taliban learned this lesson the hard way, when the very same population that had initially welcomed it as protectors against anarchy turned against the movement and were instrumental in the implosion of its state. This is why the ISIS regime will try to balance coercion and the provision of quality services (which Mara Revkin highlights). But as Aymenn al-Tamimi notes, financial constraints seriously limit the organization’s ability to sustain public support by providing essential services without having to resort to tax increases. 

Civilian administration is a relatively new activity for ISIS, and it therefore will take time to improve its performance. In the short term, ISIS will focus more heavily on the security aspects of governance. It is better equipped and experienced in this sphere, given its own prior experience as non-state jihadist force. ISIS is likely to continue to focus on what it knows best, as doing so offers it a better chance of holding hard-fought ground against its opponents.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Below is an analysis from Quinn Mecham, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He focuses on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Quinn Mecham: The Islamic State group (ISIS), despite clear pretentions to statehood in the form of the “caliphate” it declared in June 2014, does not preside over a particularly successful “state.” It faces numerous challenges from both within and without, challenges that accelerated in 2015 with increasingly systematic airstrikes on ISIS fighters and facilities by numerous external actors. 

However, the governing institutions over which the Islamic State presides currently represent the best approximation of institutionalized governance for the millions of people in Iraq and Syria under its rule. Though international actors unanimously refuse to acknowledge the Islamic State as a legitimate state in the international system, it nevertheless provides many of the functions of a state for those living within its territory. The fulfillment of these state functions is critical to the lives and livelihoods of those governed in territory controlled by the Islamic State. An effective policy to challenge the Islamic State must take the group’s governance agenda into account by constructing appealing alternatives to Islamic State governance rather than simply seeking to undermine it. 

The Islamic State’s ambitious state-building efforts present a challenging policy problem for the array of states now fighting the Islamic State group. France, Britain, Russia, and the United States, among others, regularly articulate the urgent need to destroy the group and they have increasingly acted to do so. Airstrikes that accelerated in the later half of 2015 have put substantial pressure on the Islamic State’s institutions, killing off thousands of Islamic State fighters and destroying a substantial amount of military and economic infrastructure, most notably the capacity to refine and distribute oil resources. Ground operations, such as the one that retook the Iraqi city of Ramadi in December, have also ratcheted up the pressure. 

[I]n addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians.

While these efforts help fulfill the primary goal of degrading or destroying ISIS by targeting the group’s military and operational infrastructure, they also harm the coalition’s ultimate goal of creating regional stability. This is because, in addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians, leading to very negative consequences for the populations living under Islamic State rule. As governing capacity is degraded without providing an effective substitute for ISIS governance, many of the coalition’s objectives in the region will become more elusive in the medium term. Additionally, certain aspects of the Islamic State’s state-building goals, which outside groups would like to prevent, may actually be enhanced as a result of the conflict. 

War, what is it good for?

As military pressure mounts on the Islamic State, significant parts of its project are in danger, including its financing, military success, and leadership capacity. However, it is not certain that all aspects of its state capacity will decline. Scholarship on state-building makes it clear that although war can destroy states, it can also help to build them. Although the Islamic State is often viewed externally simply as a rebel group, its domestic state-building agenda follows the historical path of many developing states in that it has benefitted from some of the effects of being at war.

[A]lthough war can destroy states, it can also help to build them.

War helps to build states in a number of ways. First, it creates an environment where the state can much more efficiently extract resources from the population in the form of taxation, military conscription, or extortion. When security is at stake, people are more willing to give up other goods for protection; a state at war also has a high degree of readiness for violence, which can be applied to extract resources from its own people. 

Second, state survival during war requires a high degree of institutional efficiency, including the creation of new bureaucratic structures such as taxation systems, governance mechanisms, information networks, and other institutions designed to control and manage conquered territory. Finally, the pressures of constant warfare for those under threat and on the front lines can also solidify group commitments and strengthen aspects of the military culture, bureaucracy, and ideology that have contributed to the group’s success.

Scaling back

Certainly warfare also can degrade state capacity, and it has done so across Islamic State territory over the past year. Much of that degraded capacity is military in nature, but the process has also reduced state capacity on which civilians directly depend. There is substantial evidence now to suggest that military pressure on the Islamic State group has negatively impacted a variety of core state functions for civilians. While most coalition airstrikes to date have sought to avoid dominantly civilian targets, economic infrastructure has been actively targeted, leading to a significant decline in the resources devoted to civilian concerns.

Compared with only a year ago, the group is now a less effective distributor of resources and has also become more dependent on resource extraction from the populations that it controls. For example, as the group’s revenues from oil and the initial spoils from captured territory have declined, both its social service provision and its ability to pay salaries have severely deteriorated. This is harmful not just because of concerns over civilian protection, but also because it reduces social stability and plays into the group’s narrative that its enemies are making people’s lives much worse. While it is difficult to measure the extent to which civilians blame the group for these new difficulties, a current media crackdown in ISIS territory means that the dominant ISIS narrative of blaming external aggressors is the only one disseminated and likely has significant impact on public opinion.

After airstrikes accelerated in the autumn, an internal Islamic State memo revealed that due to a loss of revenue, the salaries of Islamic State fighters were being cut by a dramatic 50 percent from the original promised payments. These cuts have also affected non-military employees of the Islamic State, spreading to all civil servants. At the same time, the prices for basic goods have been dramatically increasing. Financial infrastructure has also been targeted, making basic economic transactions much harder, while declining soldier salaries make it more likely that those with guns will look to civilian resources to supplement their incomes. Popular policies such as subsidies for bread have been difficult to finance and in some areas under external pressure, essentials such as wheat have become very scarce. This pressure on the food supply impacts civilians in unpredictable ways because the Islamic State has tightly regulated agricultural markets and has failed to allow free market mechanisms to efficiently distribute food resources. 

In the realm of health and education, student registration fees have gone up dramatically while subsidies have declined, scaling back access to a key service designed to systematically socialize students into the ideology of the Islamic State. Professionals are also fleeing Islamic State territory, as exemplified by physicians who have been leaving the Islamic State in large numbers. Despite apparently having significant physical resources for basic medical care, such as vaccinations, the new labor shortage of physicians has made it impossible to keep up regular vaccination schedules within the civilian population. More recently, pressure on obtaining key medical supplies has also increased. 

Two sides of the coin

Attacks on the Islamic State have therefore both strengthened and degraded different components of state capacity. Some aspects of state capacity have actually increased under conditions of war, such as taxation, extortion, conscription, and coercive institutions that control civilians. Military attacks have degraded other aspects of the state, however, such as the resources of ISIS fighters and civil servants, resource distribution capacity, and institutions that support economic development. 

It is not yet clear what these changes in military and state capacity will have on the overall trajectory of Islamic State survival and the stated goal to destroy the Islamic State. While the Islamic State could ultimately be destroyed by a coalition military campaign that proactively takes and governs territory, under the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance that is neither good for the group, for the people that live within its territory, or for long-term stability in the Middle East. 

Costs and benefits of a military campaign

This creates a set of difficult policy choices because there are also many good reasons for the military campaign against the Islamic State. The group has demonstrated its capacity and will continue to launch violent attacks on a range of international targets, providing external actors with clear justification to destroy the group’s military capacity in an effort to maintain global security. Likewise, the group’s military success and territorial control are central to its attractiveness to foreign fighters. The ideology that drives the Islamic State depends in part on its continued ability to challenge the current international system. Delivering sustained military defeats is therefore critical to puncturing the group’s apocalyptic narrative of ever greater success and expansion. 

Much of the Islamic State’s domestic control is also maintained through fear, and military defeats confirm in the public imagination that the group can be beaten, from without and potentially from within. Although significant local challenges have not yet materialized, as the Islamic State’s coercive capacity becomes weaker, defections to other groups may occur, and domestic opponents may begin to recalculate their odds of a successful challenge. 

[U]nder the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance.

The clear need for military action must, however, be weighed against the serious costs to both civilian populations and to the long-term war effort of harming existing state capacity on which civilians depend. The largely aerial campaign against the Islamic State group has had painful effects on the populations it controls. The reduction of fuel availability, the collapse in salaries, the removal of food and educational subsidies, and the deep insecurity that comes from a constant fear of bombardment has likely done very little to endear civilian populations to the cause of the coalition’s military activity, which is often seen as supporting the Syrian regime. 

Degrading state capacity through military action also feeds into the group’s narrative that both the West and Arab leaders have no concern for Muslim civilians, and that the group is the only possible one that can act as a protector against external enemies. Dozens of recent Islamic State videos paint the anti-ISIS coalition as a Russian, Syrian, Jewish, or U.S. conspiracy designed to harm civilians. While it is difficult to determine the extent of civilian casualties as a result of the campaign to date, the heightened deprivation resulting from the coalition military campaign, coupled with a glaring lack of alternative models of good governance, is unlikely to break the dependence of civilians on the Islamic State. 

Wanted: Alternatives

When one takes the Islamic State’s substantive role in governance into account in formulating a strategy to destroy the group, it becomes increasingly clear that an effective military strategy must be coupled with a much more robust agenda to build alternative governance mechanisms if it is to be successful at permanently displacing the group from its territory. 

Challenging civilian dependence on the Islamic State requires alternative forms of governance that are more appealing to the populations currently governed by the group. Even if the quality of Islamic State governance declines in relative terms, a substantively more appealing option must be available if those currently under the Islamic State’s control will be willing to support it. The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down. At this point in the tragic narrative, those craving good governance are likely to be much less interested in regime type than in institutions that can provide consistent levels of security, economic growth, and the rule of law.

The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down.

While the Islamic State adeptly uses theatrical violence and fear to exercise control within its territory, a large portion of its success in maintaining control should also be attributed to the poor alternative options for the populations that reside within it. For many Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, the imaginable alternative models of governance are currently deeply unappealing. These include:

• re-absorption into the repressive cruelties of the Syrian state, 
• control by violent and corrupt Syrian rebel groups without a track record of effective governance, 
• governance by a deeply sectarian, Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that is dependent on ideological sectarian militias to maintain security, or 
• rule by ethnic Kurdish militias that have a poor reputation for their treatment of Arab communities. 

When compared with these options, the Islamic State group often comes across as more authentic, less corrupt, more committed to the rule of law, and a better provider of state services. Its current basic governance failures, while many, are also increasingly attributable to the effects of the military campaign waged by its enemies. 

Let's build

Despite its deep, persistent flaws, an alternative, better system of governance is more likely to come from the Iraqi state (in the case of large population centers such as Mosul), or from existing informal tribal governance (in Syria and more rural areas) than it is to come from other sources. The key actions that currently need to be taken are thus two-fold:

1. First, in territory already reclaimed from the group—such as in the devastated city of Ramadi—the anti-ISIS coalition should extend every effort to distribute needed resources, infuse the economy with ready employment options, reaffirm property rights and judicial institutions, and severely punish those pursuing violent retribution. Unfortunately, little in this direction has been accomplished in the months since the capture of Ramadi, as the rebuilding of civilian infrastructure has been treated as secondary to lingering security concerns. A clear investment of institutional and economic resources that helps to demonstrate the ability to maintain security and equal treatment under the rule of law will send a more powerful signal of the Islamic State’s weakness than the results of an aerial bombing campaign. 
2. Second, a greater external commitment to support the best in existing institutions within the Iraqi state as well as in areas with the potential for effective non-state tribal governance is a critical investment in the long-term stability of Islamic State territory. In other words, external resources should increasingly focus not just on training and equipping local military allies, but also in supporting high quality civilian institutions of local and regional governance. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them.

Aggressively pursuing a governance strategy will be much more difficult than pursuing an air war against a proto-state without anti-air defenses, but it is a necessary one if the persistent appeal of the group’s state-building project is to be overcome. Because the Islamic State has powerfully distinguished itself from other jihadist competitors through its governance agenda, its support cannot be eliminated through a strategy solely dependent on destroying the governance upon which local populations depend. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them. The faster that a serious, resource-intensive commitment to building alternative governing institutions in areas bordering Islamic State territory begins, the more likely we are to see the group that calls itself the Islamic State lose control of its narrative, its territory, and the civilian support upon which it relies.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term, while Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Next up, Nelson Kasfir, Professor of Government Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and Zachariah Mampilly, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Africana Studies at Vassar College, compare ISIS’s governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations. 

Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly: Now that the Islamic State (ISIS) claims to be a state, any useful analysis of how it rules should rest on a systematic conception of governance by insurgents who hold populated territory, a surprisingly common phenomenon. If we are to understand what ISIS is doing, how long it is likely to stick around and indeed why some civilians in its domain prefer its government to what they had experienced from either Baghdad or Damascus, it would be a good idea to compare its choices of governance with other armed groups that have captured territory and governed civilian populations. All of them must administer territory without the advantages conferred by sovereignty—an important resource available to even the weakest internationally recognized states.

In our new book, Rebel Governance in Civil War, we offer a framework to explain how rebels govern. We bring together leading scholars to explore specific issues and cases from all over the globe. While single-factor hypotheses don't help much, there are broad patterns describing how and why armed groups govern that fit ISIS.

By rebel governance, we mean decision-making, the provision of services and the regulatory framework that armed groups establish to produce a social order within a specific territory they control. Rebel governance activities can be separated into those that concern how decisions are made, what social services are provided and how the production or taxation of economic rents is organized. Symbolic practices and ideologies, including religious creeds, have significant effects in supporting any system of rebel rule.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance, as the case studies in our book demonstrate. Few armed groups that control territory can ignore civilian governance, short of expelling civilian populations altogether. The vast majority of insurgent organizations range from governing minimally, by assuming few regulatory functions, to maximally by ruling everything, including the provision of public goods.

For example, although the leaders of the National Patriotic Front (NPFL) in Liberia were primarily interested in personal profit, they still created the veneer of government to seek international recognition and to ensure the proceeds of commercial enterprises went into their pockets. Both types of insurgents were active during the Greek civil war, the conservatives limiting their governance activities, while the communists tried to regulate all aspects of social life.

Despite the many Western press accounts that dwell on ISIS’ penchant for flamboyant displays of callous cruelty, it would be a mistake to think that ISIS does not engage in civilian governance. As Charles Lister notes: "By perceiving and presenting itself as a state, IS [ISIS] has sought to control and govern territory and maintain a cabinet of ministers responsible for a broad range of 'ministries,' incorporating military, civil, political, and financial duties." As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration. It demands strict obedience, but it is also intent on building infrastructure and running it effectively. By basing governance on its revival of the "Caliphate according to the prophetic method," that is, re-establishing institutions on the basis of what it understands the Prophet Mohammed to have insisted, ISIS leaders appear to have demanded control over most facets of social and personal life.

As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration.

As early as 2007, ISIS published a booklet outlining its plans for governance. In 2013, it issued pamphlets that laid out the exact governance activities the organization would undertake once in control of specific territories. Immediately after capturing various towns in Syria and Iraq, ISIS set about taking control over key industries and services including the distribution of electricity, water, and fuel as well as the production and distribution of food. ISIS monopolized service provision and proved sophisticated in using it to balance its brutality. As a result, "Sunni civilians have been more likely to accept the imposition of harsh norms," as Lister has written.

Symbolic processes are powerful tools of governance that legitimate rebel groups or signal their coercive capability. These processes are often influenced by specific ideological concerns. Like nation-states, rebels create distinctive symbolic repertoires by producing their own flags, currencies, mausoleums and staging parades and rallies. The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols. "The Islamic State was signaling that its flag was not only the symbol of its government and the herald of a future caliphate; it was the harbinger of the final battle at the End of Days," writes Will McCants in The ISIS Apocalypse.

The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols.

Explaining varying approaches

What factors shape these different traits of rebel governance? In our book, we identify four clusters: causes arising before the rebellion; causes arising during the rebellion; those emanating from attributes or behavior of the rebels; and finally those developing from responses of civilians.

First, pre-conflict factors involving the relations between state and society shape subsequent patterns of rebel governance. History matters because insurgents mostly acquire their cultural values, education, and ideas about governance, while growing up in the society they later defy. These experiences shape them even as they rebel. How they resolve these contradictions will vary from case to case. Thus, the Forces Nouvelles that occupied northern Côte d'Ivoire after 2002 "adopted—or rather adapted—procedures from the former state administration." Since they did not hold unchallenged authority, they chose to share the maintenance of security with neo-traditional hunters' associations who were deeply trusted by local residents. In a different case, General Padiri's Mai-Mai militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo adopted the administrative pattern of offices of the Congolese government while adding "Bureau Six" to incorporate commonly held autochthonous magico-religious beliefs that greatly deepened the legitimacy of the militia's leaders.

Because ISIS takes an uncompromisingly radical stance, it is difficult to identify its continuities with prior governance. Still, a closer examination of ISIS’ involvement in food distribution provides an illustrative example of its links with the practices of past regimes. As one recent academic study (by José Ciro Martínez and Brent Eng, in a still-unpublished manuscript) points out, food production has long been understood as a key element of the weak social contract binding pre-conflict regimes in Syria and Iraq to their people. In pre-conflict Syria, the Baath Party had long understood direct control over the bread market as an integral task of the social welfare pact it struck with the population. Recognizing the importance of bread distribution to the Syrian population, ISIS undertook numerous efforts to control and ensure the production of bread within its territories. In a 2013 pamphlet published in Aleppo that outlines ISIS’ governance strategy, a promise to ensure bread distribution stands out alongside more conventional governance activities. Importantly, considering the propagandistic nature of many ISIS communications, the group went far beyond rhetorical positions in their commitment to policies concerning bread. Instead of merely mandating the manner in which bread would be produced and distributed in ISIS-controlled areas of Aleppo and Raqqa, the group also “subsidized the cost of flour, accelerated the opening of bakeries and distributed bread itself when necessary,” as Martínez and Eng write.

[W]artime contextual factors...affect rebel governance.

Second, wartime contextual factors—those circumstances that emerge during rebellion— also affect rebel governance. As rebels fight and as they engage with civilians, they often change their practices of governance. The military threat of the incumbent and other military rivals as well as the broader wartime political economy often significantly impact insurgents’ approaches toward civilians. With regard to military capacity, Stathis Kalyvas shows that as the communist insurgents lost territory towards the end of the Greek civil war, they became more coercive. In Latin America as well, there have been many cases in which rebel governance decayed when insurgent groups failed to protect their civilian populations from either internal or external violence, or in response to expansion of electoral opportunities by the incumbent state.

Similarly, a comparison of ISIS’ governance in Raqqa and Mosul, the two largest cities under its control, suggests that external military pressure has made the government more intimidating and sometimes less willing to abide by its own rules. After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had. In Raqqa the regime acted on the basis of its posted rules until American-led air strikes caused its leaders to become somewhat “more paranoid and prone to kidnapping people randomly.” In Mosul, residents, who originally regarded ISIS as “liberators,” became more dissatisfied as their taxes greatly increased and their nonpayment was met with physical punishments and fines. The failure of ISIS to protect its citizens from collateral damage from air strikes is certain to have increased their discontent.

After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had.

Material rewards also affect rebel governance. Rebels often change their pattern of governance when they begin to accumulate significant rents through the exploitation of natural resources. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) changed after it began to export diamonds and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) stopped following some of its Marxist principles after it began to export cocaine.

Usually, rebels cannot defend oil wells from attacks by incumbent states. ISIS has been an exception, making a daily income of $3 million in September 2014. After the recent steep fall in crude oil prices and air strikes, internal taxation (or extortion) may have become a more significant source of revenue. ISIS has also profited from kidnapping and bank robberies. Its reliance on oil production has proven both a boon and curse as the value of ISIS-produced oil shifts dramatically due to both the challenge of ensuring production and fluctuations in oil prices globally. The income permitted ISIS to pay generous salaries to civilians to keep sanitation and utility services functioning.

Third, rebel attributes and behavior—organizational structure and ideological orientation—affect rebel governance. Ideologies often provide rebels with political identities, coherent frameworks for political and social action and a sense of disciplined commitment to an overriding purpose. The Greek communists learned their Marxism before they rebelled. Ethnic secessionists, such as the Naga in India, knew whom they were going to exclude from their imagined polity in advance of taking up arms.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance. Rules that rebels create and civilians obey can help provide legitimate authority, whether out of trust (as in the case of the Shining Path in Peru) or out of fear (as inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

ISIS bases not only its fundamental character, but also its plan of governance, almost entirely on its peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, received both a masters and a doctorate in Islamic rhetoric from the University of Islamic Sciences in Baghdad. As the caliph, some of the Islamic rationales that have been supplied to justify specific ISIS regulations can be traced to his earlier education.

The influence of Islam on ISIS’ ideology is most evident in its attempts to establish a legal system. The rebellion "sees itself as creating a distinctive and authentic legal order for the here and now, one that is based not only on a literal (if selective) reading of early Islamic materials but also on a long-standing [Islamic] theory of statecraft and legal authority." Andrew March and Mara Revkin identify laws governing land, trade, taxation and treatment of prisoners and slaves, all derived from ISIS’ interpretation of scripture. In addition, they assert "the theory of the caliphate implies a law-based social contract with reciprocal obligations and rights between the caliph and the people." The extent to which this legal order actually results in enforceable rights that protect civilians is unclear. However, there is evidence that ISIS officials engaged in dispute resolution among civilians, even punishing its fighters when they took bribes or harmed civilians.

[C]ivilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance.

Finally, civilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance. We examine both individual reactions to armed groups as well as how varying social groups—such as traders, religious orders, ethnic groups, and civil society organizations—engage with or challenge an armed group’s governance efforts. ISIS is challenging to study since it is perceived as denying civilians’ agency completely. But even under the most autocratic governance arrangements, civilians have found ways to influence and even challenge armed groups. For example, during the war in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had numerous methods for incorporating civilian feedback despite its deserved reputation as an autocratic and brutal organization. The education system in Tiger-ruled areas emerged as a result of civilian pressure and meaningfully incorporated civilians into its daily operations.

Indeed, a surprising number of rebel groups have shared decision-making with civilians. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) created democratic village councils, as did the National Resistance Army during its war in Uganda. On the other hand, summary justice and brutal punishments can increase legitimacy among civilians when meted out to thieves and rapists. Residents gave strong support to rebels who took over neighborhoods in Medellín, Colombia and provided instant justice to those the community regarded as criminals.

It appears that ISIS does not share decision-making with civilians, similar to other rebels that take Islam as the doctrinal basis for their revolt such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or Boko Haram in Nigeria. But discerning whether civilian responses affect ISIS governance would require difficult (though not impossible) field visits to ISIS-controlled territory. The fact that the group frequently needs to rely on civilians in order to provide services suggests that there may be greater scope for civilian involvement than is commonly recognized.

[W]hile ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally.

Taken together, the above discussion shows that while ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally. Armed groups do not determine the outcome of their governance efforts in a vacuum. Rather, civilian governance outcomes are established by the behavior of a variety of actors each interacting in a shifting and complex environment. While ISIS may be distinctive in its commitment to implementing a form of civilian governance based on its understanding of Islamic modes of governance, it is still subject to these dynamics. Analyzing it through the four clusters of factors discussed above show how its governance of civilians compares with other rebel groups.

The sustainability question

What does this tell us about the future of civilian governance under ISIS? Because ISIS has established a caliphate, it is committed to governing the people in the territories it conquers. As discussed above, ISIS leaders have adopted an approach to law that creates room for some protections for civilians and an approach to social welfare that provides space for a limited social pact. Yet, these rulers have fashioned an uncompromising notion that civilians must be governed within their strict interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In addition, they depend on foreign military recruits to buttress their rule.

These factors create contradictions that may cause regime instability that might either increase regime brutality, if leaders remain constant to their principles, or result in regime decay, if they lose their sense of purpose. ISIS may eventually be “hamstrung by its radicalism.” During the short time that ISIS has ruled civilians, it has insisted that its decisions cannot be questioned. The relevant lesson from studying other rebellions is that groups better able to accommodate different political actors through a process of political negotiation are more likely to endure. If ISIS leaders remain obstinate, refusing to compromise in favor of a principled ideological stand, civilians will continue to suffer and either fight or flee if they can. Alternately, if the group’s leaders are tempted by the wealth the regime has accumulated, they may give in to corruption and fashion a more predatory regime.

ISIS has also become a magnet for foreign fighters. No one really knows how many there are, but an early (2014) estimate is 15,000 from 90 countries. Although the flow has decreased recently, cultural interactions and political disputes among these foreigners and civilians are certain to remain problematic. As the external military threats faced by ISIS grow, its leaders are likely to rely on the loyalty and morale of their foreign fighters at the expense of the civilian population. Civilian governance will probably decay, resulting in greater instability and perhaps sowing the seeds of ISIS' own demise.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, Egypt, and Brussels indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term. Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control, and most recently, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly compared ISIS’ governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations.

Next up is Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He assesses ISIS’ model of governance before and after coalition airstrikes against the group began. Before the strikes, he argues, ISIS had a freer hand to implement its policies, and has used savagery and governance to both deter and incentivize communities under its control.

Hassan Hassan: Abu Sameh, a Syrian in his late twenties, joined the Syrian al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front as a fighter in early 2013. He fought for the group in Deir Ezzor and northeastern Syria until the Islamic State (ISIS) began to dominate there in the summer of 2014. That’s when he switched sides.

He was drawn to ISIS through one of his relatives, a commander of a small armed faction operating near the Iraqi border. With ISIS, battle-hardened Abu Sameh landed a job related to his undergraduate major for the first time since graduating college in 2009. He became an accountant working in the group’s oil industry.

As with many like Abu Sameh, ISIS benefited from local expertise to run its state-building enterprise in the areas it conquered in northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria in 2013 and 2014. It also re-opened institutions that ceased to operate after the collapse of provisional governments—former employees, for instance, had continued to receive salaries from Baghdad and Damascus, but they typically sat at home and enjoyed the kickbacks, without being made to work by armed groups in control of the areas. When ISIS took over, many of them were forced back to work.

Enforcement of strict rules helped ISIS establish a semblance of order, which appealed to local communities plagued by kidnapping, highway robbery, theft, and warlordism. After ISIS took control, crime disappeared overnight and people could travel unarmed from Aleppo to Mosul. Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Local perception

Assessments of ISIS’ model of governance should distinguish between the periods before and after coalition airstrikes. Priority should be given to the period that preceded the airstrikes—between June and November 2014 in most areas—when the group had a freer hand to implement its policies. Assessments must also consider how ISIS fared in comparison to the armed groups and governments which preceded it. In some cases, ISIS appeared to have gone even further than previous governments in extending its writ to rural areas of Iraq and Syria. 

In this context, local perception is key to the evaluation of ISIS’ performance. According to weekly or sometimes daily conversations I have had with residents in eastern Syria—where I am originally from—people living under ISIS rule equally blame airstrikes or government bombings for the worsening economic situation in their areas, not just ISIS. The desire to link ISIS’ inability to deliver services with the failure of its model is understandable, it allows one to undermine its appeal and wholly blame it for the deteriorating situation in ISIS-held areas. But properly understanding the way ISIS ruled during this specific period with an emphasis on local perceptions is vital not only for academic objectivity but also to fully grasp the unintended consequences of the current coalition campaign against ISIS.

Referring to the destruction of Ramadi after the expulsion of ISIS in December, Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman in Iraq, told The New York Times: “One hundred percent of this is on ISIL [another acronym for ISIS] because no one would be dropping any bombs if ISIL hadn’t gone in there.” In reality, however, many in those areas see the causes of destruction with a little more nuance than “no ISIS, no bombs.” First, ISIS entered most of those towns with little confrontation with civilians; it was political grievances and the failure of other armed groups that partly enabled ISIS to occupy certain areas to begin with. Moreover, the air campaign targeted bridges and oil facilities, which made life harder for civilians and disrupted a wartime economy that preceded ISIS rule.

Beyond violence 

ISIS is a manager and not a distributor of resources. In the Syrian context, nationalist, Islamist, and jihadist groups have generally sought to win hearts and minds primarily through the free or cheap provision of basic resources. ISIS, however, opts for managing what it has under its control. Even as it charges the population for services, the model remains more effective than the ones in southern and northern Syria for a simple reason. Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule. Elsewhere, like in Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus or in Aleppo, provision of services is trumped by chaos, uncertainty, and ineffective courts, because local groups do not have exclusive or unchallenged control over territory.

Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule.

Other forces that ruled in Syria prior to ISIS aimed to establish order based on consent. Even the Nusra Front, which was far more powerful and disciplined than other forces up until the rise of ISIS, retracted some of its decisions, seeking to avoid clashes with local families. The Nusra Front (and other Islamist groups as well) typically shied away from enforcing their rules to avoid alienating the population. In most court cases, for instance, whether a ruling would be enforced or not would hinge on whether the criminal or his family had voluntarily accepted the court’s judgment in the first place.

Conversely, under ISIS, courts have a high enforcement mechanism. This was true even when ISIS was a minor player operating from bases in rebel-controlled areas in early 2013. ISIS would encourage people to seek its help when they had a complaint about a person and would forcefully resolve the issue, even if that meant confrontation with powerful groups or individuals. This occurred numerous times ahead of ISIS’ rise to prominence in late 2013. This partly explains why many villagers either travelled outside their towns to fight for ISIS even after it was driven out of their areas in that period or accepted it when it returned later.

ISIS’ model was high-risk. The group was consistent and determined about enforcing its rules, and would not tolerate rivalry in its territory or recognize Sharia commissions other than its own. It demanded uniformity at any cost. One of the most claimed “advantages" of ISIS’ rule in its territories is that it “gets the job done.” Unlike the Free Syrian Army and other Islamist groups, ISIS would send a patrol to fetch someone if another person filed a complaint about him (these complaints typically involved financial fraud or unsettled commercial disputes). According to one resident who was involved in such a case, even if the complaint in question dated back to the years before the uprising, ISIS would settle the situation, provided that the complainant had proof.

ISIS...demanded uniformity at any cost.

“If you’re an FSA commander and you have a civilian relative, [FSA and other rebels] would accept mediation,” Hassan al-Salloum, a former rebel commander from Idlib, told me, referring to the time when ISIS was still a marginal player in 2013. “But with ISIS, if I complain about an FSA member, they go and bring him in for interrogation. They would not accept mediation. People then started to go to complain to ISIS, looking for help and asking them to intervene.”

Regulations and price controls are other areas in which ISIS’ governance proved successful. It banned fishermen from using dynamite and electricity to catch fish. It also prohibited residents from using the chaos of war to stake new land claims. This was especially true in the Syrian desert, where residents had attempted to build new homes or establish new businesses in public lands, much to the chagrin of their neighbors. ISIS also limited the profit margins on oil by-products, ice, flour, and other essential commodities. It also prohibited families from setting up refineries close to private residences, under the threat of confiscation, a policy that led some families to quit the oil business altogether, according to residents I interviewed.

A state—and more

In certain cases, ISIS governed areas more comprehensively than the governments of Baghdad and Damascus. Whether in delivery of services or management of people and resources under its control, ISIS makes it clear it is the only ruler in town, and once residents recognize that, they are often allowed to help govern their areas. There have been instances, according to tribal sources from Iraq and Syria I spoke to, of “deputization” whereby ISIS re-armed specific tribesmen to control their own area, though that process remained extremely limited.

Before, other groups and previous governments would use tribal leaders as intermediaries between them and local communities. ISIS, by contrast, acts as an intermediary between different tribes and even within the same tribe to resolve disputes, some of which date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, it has systematically disarmed local communities that came under its rule in a way that previous governments failed to do over decades. 

The group is the only one in the two countries that employs an extensive network of staff exclusively dedicated to dealing with tribal affairs. The man in charge of tribal affairs is a Saudi national by the name of Daygham Abu Abdullah, locally known to be well-versed in tribal lineage and dynamics. He oversees a bureau that receives tribal delegations from across the self-styled caliphate that desire to resolve conflict or appeal for clemency. After ISIS asserts control over an area, tribal outreach helps it engage with local tribes and act as a social arbiter. Even though the organization carried out mass atrocities against certain tribes, the group often has other members of those same tribes fighting in its ranks, including members of Albu Nimr and Albu Fahad in Iraq, and Al Shaytat in Syria. ISIS employs a seemingly contradictory strategy of divide-and-rule. It first attempts infiltrate an area, and follows up with an outreach policy after consolidating control. The office that handles amending tribal disputes is known as Public Relations Bureau.

Whereas Islamic inheritance laws stipulate that women are to receive half of that received by a male sibling, tribal society often deprives women even of that half share. Unlike governments, which rarely enforce Sharia-based inheritance laws, ISIS sent out instructions to local communities to provide women with their due share and some women who complained to ISIS judges would receive their shares retroactively from their brothers.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria. Lawlessness, kidnappings, arbitrary killings, and highway robbery are greater sources of grievance for people living outside regime areas than poor services, something that ISIS has dealt with by providing security based on brutal justice and policing. The semblance of order established by ISIS remains a strong advantage for the group, despite its diminished ability in other aspects of governance, and forces that will take over from ISIS will be judged accordingly.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that the group has lost the initial appeal it had when it conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. The U.S.-led air campaign has blunted the group’s ability to generate income from oil and war spoils that usually come from rapid expansion. It has also reduced the group’s capacity to provide sufficient services for communities under its rule. The air campaign has also resulted in an interesting trend: it has strengthened the role of ISIS’ security and intelligence core in the towns, villages and cities the group controls, a development that has led to mounting complaints about their harsh and crude behavior.

ISIS associates, too, complain of the group’s security apparatus to the extent that it has become common to hear of clerics explaining to ISIS members that the state that Prophet Mohammed founded also included munafiqun, or “hypocrites,” and that this should not be a reason to abandon it, according to interviews I conducted, including with members. (Connoting someone who only feigns belief in public, the term munafiqun is a heavy accusation to levy at a fellow Muslims, and such people are condemned in the Quran.)

[T]argeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse.

But all that will not translate into a rebellion against ISIS. Additionally—and more importantly—targeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse. In some cases, airstrikes led families to send their children to join ISIS as the only way to generate income. Iraqi officials have warned that choking off ISIS’s economic routes might result in “collateral damage.” While they may see this as necessary evil, it also runs the risk of helping ISIS tighten its grip by driving residents closer to it as the only employer or provider in town.

The unintended consequences of the air campaign are a serious concern, especially if ISIS is to be defeated strategically. This is something I have discussed with everyone involved, from civilians to ISIS members to Western officials involved in the anti-ISIS campaign. Residents often complain that they are suffering collective punishment by inconsiderate foreign forces. ISIS, meanwhile, tells the communities under its rule that it would have brought more prosperity to their towns had it not been for the airstrikes. A high-level American official involved in the campaign acknowledged to me that officials were aware of the possibility of unintended consequences but insisted that airstrikes targeting the economy in eastern Syria and western Iraq will only intensify. 

Last night, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn addressed the Republican convention as a headline speaker on the subject of national security. One of Donald Trump’s closest advisors—so much so that he was considered for vice president—Flynn repeated many of the themes found in his new book, The Field of Fight, How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, which he coauthored with Michael Ledeen. (The book is published by St. Martin’s, which also published mine.)

Written in Flynn’s voice, the book advances two related arguments: First, the U.S. government does not know enough about its enemies because it does not collect enough intelligence, and it refuses to take ideological motivations seriously. Second, our enemies are collaborating in an “international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy” the United States despite their ideological differences.

Readers will immediately notice a tension between the two ideas. “On the surface,” Flynn admits, “it seems incoherent.” He asks: 

“How can a Communist regime like North Korea embrace a radical Islamist regime like Iran? What about Russia’s Vladimir Putin? He is certainly no jihadi; indeed, Russia has a good deal to fear from radical Islamist groups.” 

Flynn spends much of the book resolving the contradiction and proving that America’s enemies—North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and ISIS—are in fact working in concert.

No one who has read classified intelligence or studied international relations will balk at the idea that unlikely friendships are formed against a common enemy. As Flynn observes, the revolutionary Shiite government in Tehran cooperates with nationalist Russia and communist North Korea; it has also turned a blind eye (at the very least) to al-Qaida’s Sunni operatives in Iran and used them bargaining chips when negotiating with Osama bin Laden and the United States. 

Flynn argues that this is more than “an alliance of convenience.” Rather, the United States’ enemies share “a contempt for democracy and an agreement—by all the members of the enemy alliance—that dictatorship is a superior way to run a country, an empire, or a caliphate.” Their shared goals of maximizing dictatorship and minimizing U.S. interference override their substantial ideological differences. Consequently, the U.S. government must work to destroy the alliance by “removing the sickening chokehold of tyranny, dictatorships, and Radical Islamist regimes.” Its failure to do so over the past decades gravely imperils the United States, he contends.

The book thus offers two very different views of how to exercise American power abroad: spread democracies or stand with friendly strongmen...[P]erhaps it mirrors the confusion in the Republican establishment over the direction of conservative foreign policy.

Some of Flynn’s evidence for the alliance diverts into the conspiratorial—I’ve seen nothing credible to back up his assertion that the Iranians were behind the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni apocalypticists. And there’s an important difference between the territorially-bounded ambitions of Iran, Russia, and North Korea, on the one hand, and ISIS’s desire to conquer the world on the other; the former makes alliances of convenience easier than the latter. Still, Flynn would basically be a neocon if he stuck with his core argument: tyrannies of all stripes are arrayed against the United States so the United States should destroy them.

But some tyrannies are less worthy of destruction than others. In fact, Flynn argues there’s a category of despot that should be excluded from his principle, the “friendly tyrants” like President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi in Egypt and former president Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Saddam Hussein should not have been toppled, Flynn argues, and even Russia could become an “ideal partner for fighting Radical Islam” if only it would come to its senses about the threat of “Radical Islam.” Taken alone, these arguments would make Flynn realist, not a neocon. 

The book thus offers two very different views of how to exercise American power abroad: spread democracies or stand with friendly strongmen. Neither is a sure path to security. Spreading democracy through the wrong means can bring to power regimes that are even more hostile and authoritarian; standing with strongmen risks the same. Absent some principle higher than just democracy or security for their own sakes, the reader is unable to decide between Flynn’s contradictory perspectives and judge when their benefits are worth the risks. 

It’s strange to find a book about strategy so at odds with itself. Perhaps the dissonance is due to the co-authors’ divergent views (Ledeen is a neocon and Flynn is comfortable dining with Putin.) Or perhaps it mirrors the confusion in the Republican establishment over the direction of conservative foreign policy. Whatever the case, the muddled argument offered in The Field of Fight demonstrates how hard it is to overcome ideological differences to ally against a common foe, regardless of whether that alliance is one of convenience or conviction. 

Editors’ Note: Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, France has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region, write Philippe Le Corre and Michael O’Hanlon. This piece originally appeared on The National Interest.

On April 26, France’s defense shipbuilding company DCNS secured a victory in winning, against Japan and Germany, a long-awaited $40 billion Australian submarine deal. It may not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following France’s growing interest in the Asia-Pacific for the past five years. Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, the country has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region.

Visiting New Caledonia last weekend, Prime Minister Manuel Valls immediately decided on the spot to fly to Australia to celebrate the submarine news. Having been at odds in the 1990s over France’s decision to test its nuclear weapon capacities on an isolated Pacific island, Paris and Canberra have begun a close partnership over the last decade, culminating in the decision by Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in power since September 2015.

Unlike its Japanese competitor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), DCNS promised to build the submarine main parts on Australian soil, creating 2,900 jobs in the Adelaide area. The French also secured support from U.S. defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, one of which will eventually build the twelve shortfin Barracuda submarines’ combat systems. Meanwhile, this unexpected victory, in light of the close strategic relationship between Australia and Japan, has shed light on France’s sustained ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region. Thanks to its overseas territories of New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia and Clipperton Island, France has the world’s second-largest maritime domain. It is also part of QUAD, the Quadrilateral Defence Coordination Group that also includes the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and which coordinates security efforts in the Pacific, particularly in the maritime domain, by supporting island states to robustly and sustainably manage their natural resources, including fisheries.

France is also attempting to correct an excessive focus on China by developing new ties with India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, which have all received a number of French ministerial visits. France’s overseas territories also include a presence in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, with the islands of Mayotte, Réunion and the Scattered Islands, and French Southern and Antarctic Territories, as well as the northwest region of the Indian Ocean through its permanent military presence in the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti. Altogether these presences encompass one million French citizens. This sets France apart from its fellow EU member states regarding defense and security in the Asia-Pacific, particularly as France is a top supplier of military equipment to several Asian countries including Singapore, Malaysia, India and Australia. Between 2008 and 2012, Asian nations accounted for 28 percent of French defense equipment sales, versus 12 percent during 1998–2002. (More broadly, 70 percent of European containerized merchandise trade transits through the Indian Ocean.)

Despite its unique position, France is also supportive of a joint European Union policy toward the region, especially when it comes to developments in the South China Sea. Last March, with support from Paris, Berlin, London and other members, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, issued a statement criticizing China’s actions:

“The EU is committed to maintaining a legal order for the seas and oceans based upon the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This includes the maintenance of maritime safety, security, and cooperation, freedom of navigation and overflight. While not taking a position on claims to land territory and maritime space in the South China Sea, the EU urges all claimants to resolve disputes through peaceful means, to clarify the basis of their claims, and to pursue them in accordance with international law including UNCLOS and its arbitration procedures.”

This does not mean that France is neglecting its “global partnership” with China. In 2014, the two countries celebrated fifty years of diplomatic relations; both governments conduct annual bilateral dialogues on international and security issues. But as a key EU state, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a significant contributor to the Asia-Pacific’s security, France has launched a multidimensional Asia policy.

All of this should be seen as welcome news by Washington. While there would have been advantages to any of the three worthy bids, a greater French role in the Asia-Pacific should be beneficial. At this crucial historical moment in China's rise and the region's broader blossoming, the United States needs a strong and engaged European partnership to encourage Beijing in the right direction and push back together when that does not occur. Acting in concert with some of the world's other major democracies can add further legitimacy to America's actions to uphold the international order in the Asia-Pacific. To be sure, Japan, South Korea and Australia are key U.S. partners here and will remain so. But each also has its own limitations (and in Japan's case, a great deal of historical baggage in dealing with China).

European states are already heavily involved in economic interactions with China. The submarine decision will help ensure a broader European role that includes a hard-headed perspective on security trends as well.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s idea to withdraw American forces from Asia—letting allies like Japan and South Korea fend for themselves, including possibly by acquiring nuclear weapons—is fundamentally unsound, as I’ve written in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Among the many dangers of preemptively pulling American forces out of Japan and South Korea, including an increased risk of war between Japan and China and a serious blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, such a move would heighten the threat of war between China and Taiwan. The possibility that the United States would dismantle its Asia security framework could unsettle Taiwan enough that it would pursue a nuclear deterrent against China, as it has considered doing in the past—despite China indicating that such an act itself could be a pathway to war. And without bases in Japan, the United States could not as easily deter China from potential military attacks on Taiwan. 

Trump’s proposed Asia policy could take the United States and its partners down a very dangerous road. It’s an experiment best not to run.

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Barack Obama’s presidency has witnessed widespread change throughout Africa. His four trips there, spanning seven countries, reflect his belief in the continent’s potential and importance. African countries face many challenges that span issues of trade, investment, and development, as well as security and stability. With President Obama’s second term coming to an end, it is important to begin to reflect on his legacy and how his administration has helped frame the future of Africa.

On July 19, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings hosted a discussion on Africa policy. Matthew Carotenuto, professor at St. Lawrence University and author of “Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and the Politics of Belonging” (Ohio University Press, 2016) discussed his research in the region. He was joined by Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon partook in and moderated the discussion.

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On August 7, the White House announced cancellation of the planned Moscow summit in early September between Presidents Obama and Putin, saying there were no prospects for significant progress on key issues at the meeting.  The White House also said cooperation with Russia remains a priority, and on August 9 Secretaries Kerry and Hagel met with their Russian counterparts, Ministers Lavrov and Shoigu.  While President Obama intends to travel to St Petersburg for the G20 summit on September 6 and 7, there has been no word on whether there will be a bilateral meeting with President Putin on the margins of the summit.  Clearly, U.S.-Russian relations have entered troubled times.

On August 28, the Center on the United States and Europe hosted a panel discussion to address these developments and future prospects for the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow.  Brookings Senior Fellows Clifford Gaddy, Steven Pifer and Angela Stent will take part.  Brookings Visiting Fellow Jeremy Shapiro moderated.   Following opening comments, the panelists took questions from the audience.

Watch full video from the event at C-SPAN.org »

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• What the U.S. Does in Syria Will Be Costly for Russia
• Russia Reluctant to Intervene in Syria
• Russia Fears Increased Instability in the Middle East

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• The U.S.-Russia Relationship: What's Next?

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In August, the White House announced the cancellation of the Moscow summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, while still saying that U.S. relations with Russia remain a priority. By all accounts, the Snowden case appears to have further complicated already strained U.S.-Russia relations. With President Obama headed to St. Petersburg, Russia for the G20 summit on September 6 and 7, the likelihood of an Obama-Putin bilateral meeting remains unanswered and unlikely.

With an eye toward a possible bilateral meeting in St. Petersburg, Brookings experts Steven Pifer, Clifford Gaddy and Angela Stent address these developments and future prospects for the U.S.-Russia cooperation on issues like Syria and arms control.

Steven Pifer:

“I think people now see the reset as a failure. I actually think the reset succeeded, because the goal was not to get us to Nirvana with Russia, but to lift us out of the hole that we found ourselves in in 2008.”

Clifford Gaddy:

“Steve has said that the relations are not as bad, are at their worst since, you know, the fall of communism. I would probably say they probably are as bad.”

Angela Stent:

“It's not clear what the U.S.-Russian agenda is going forward. The things we would like to accomplish — more arms control, an agreement on missile defense, even, you know, more U.S. investment in Russia — the Russians don't seem to be interesting in responding. We do need to work together — and we will, still, on post-2014 Afghanistan, on Iran — but it's really unclear what an agenda would be going forward.”

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The tenth anniversary meeting of the “Valdai International Discussion Club” –a forum that brings together foreign Russia experts with top Russian officials, politicians, journalists and academics—conveyed two strong messages from the Kremlin: Russia is fully back on the world stage seeking a leadership role; and Russia offers the world an alternative value system to that of the West, which has lost its moral compass. No one made these points more vigorously than Vladimir Putin himself, who has dined with the group for the past decade. He was in top form, exuding self-confidence and decisiveness. Yet the forum itself, though Kremlin-sponsored, also had discordant voices, including several vocal critics of the way Putin’s Russia is run.

The meeting this year took place in a picturesque resort on Lake Valdai, 250 miles from Moscow. It was the largest ever, with more than 200 participants. The official theme was “Russia’s Diversity for the Modern World” and focused on how Russia should define its national identity. In some ways, every Valdai meeting—and I have attended all ten—has had as its underlying theme the “whither Russia question”, even at the session in Siberia when we were discussing whether Russia was indeed an energy superpower. But this year the question of Russia’s uniqueness and its place in the world was the main focus.

Sergei Karaganov, one of the meeting’s co-organizers, was hardly upbeat. He began the forum on a cautionary note, saying that Russia had wasted the last twenty years and that the only idea that still unites Russians is their victory in World War Two.

Unlike in previous years, both the liberal and moderate nationalist political opposition was represented. Two of the most notable interventions were by Yevgeny Roizman, the controversial newly-elected major of Yekaterinburg and Ksenia Sobchak, daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg who gave Putin his post-Soviet political start in the early 1990s. Roizman gave a spirited defense of the importance of ending politics as usual in the corrupt provinces. Sobchak made an impassioned plea for her generation of urban, educated 30 –somethings. Her message: we reject the traditional Russian political patronage model, we don’t want a president who addresses us as a father talks to his children, we want to be treated as independent adults responsible for the decisions they make and we don’t want to rely on the state. And, she added, we didn’t grow up in the USSR, we have no nostalgia for the Soviet Union, we don’t care about Russia being a great power and we reject anti-Americanism. Indeed, we like the West.

One of the eternal questions about Russia’s identity—whether Russia is European, Asian or Eurasian—was addressed in a day-long session at the Iversky monastery, founded in 1653 and elegantly restored in recent years. In a panel highlighting Russia’s role as a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state whose inhabitants have for centuries included Orthodox Christians, Jews, Moslems and Buddhists, Metropolitan Hilarion delivered a strong message. Russian Orthodox Christians, he said, are the true harbingers of traditional Christian values, while Western Protestants have embraced liberal values on issues such as abortion, homosexual rights and gay marriage that undermine Christian morality. These views were reflected in President Putin’s prepared speech, when he reiterated that Russia supports traditional Christian morality and opposes same-sex marriage. Moreover, both Putin and the Russian clergy emphasized that Orthodox Christians and Moslems share a commitment to traditional morality, highlighting their common bonds – and differentiating them on common grounds from the West.

One of Putin’s main foreign policy projects for his third term is his proposed Eurasian Union, a topic that provoked some lively discussion. Russian speakers argued that the Kremlin had “left the imperial paradigm behind”, and that this union would be an organization of equals akin to the European Union. Moldovan and Ukrainian speakers, by contrast, discussed the growing economic and political pressure that Russia is putting on them to reject the EU in the run-up to the Vilnius summit in November. Brussels is poised to offer Ukraine and Moldova Association Agreements that Russia claims would adversely impact both countries’ continuing economic ties to Moscow. Without Ukraine, the Eurasian Union will not fulfill the Kremlin’s ambition to create a grouping of post-Soviet states as a counterbalance to the European Union.

Russia’s growing global role in the wake of its Syria initiative was the main focus of discussions with the top officials who came to Valdai—Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Ivanov. They were clearly buoyed by the fact that Russia had taken the initiative in organizing the agreement to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, and stressed that, they favor a strong, secular Syria. The Opposition, they claimed, was up to 75% controlled by Al Qaeda. There seemed to be agreement that not all of the chemical weapons would be found and destroyed, but that enough could be destroyed to accomplish Russian and American goals. And they repeated Russia’s claim that chemical weapons were used only by the Opposition and not by Assad’s own forces.

Shoigu addressed the question of military reform by quoting Russia’s pre-revolutionary Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin who said “Give us money and time, and you won’t recognize our armed forces.” He expressed concern about the situation in Afghanistan after NATO’s withdrawal next year, and questioned who would form the next generation of leaders in Kabul. He reiterated that U.S. missile defense programs were ultimately aimed at Russia, not Iran or North Korea, but also suggested developing joint U.S-Russian ABM systems. NATO, he said, is a threat to Russia. What else was NATO enlargement, if not directed against Russia? His message to the group-no more new entrants to NATO.

In previous years, President Putin has met with foreign participants only in a private setting, but for this tenth anniversary the format of the Putin meeting changed. He sat on the stage with four discussants—former German Defense Minister Volker Ruehe, former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and President of the U.S-based Center for the National Interest Dimitri Simes. They addressed foreign and Russian participants and the four-hour meeting was televised.

Putin gave a vigorous defense of Russia as the standard-bearer of traditional Christian morality, arguing that the United States and Europe had rejected the Christian roots that form the basis of Western civilization. Criticizing “excessive political correctness” he declared that the European multicultural project had failed. He also warned that attempts by un-named powers to revive the model of a unipolar world had also failed. Stressing Russia’s right to have a seat at the table on all decisions of major international importance, he invoked the times when Russia had made an important contribution to world peace—the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Yalta Conference in 1945. He warned that when Russia was excluded—for instance from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles—this led to war. His message on Syria was clear—Russia took the initiative and had helped the United States by proposing an agreement to rid Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. And it expects to continue to be respected as an indispensable global player.

For anyone who has followed the Kremlin’s fraught relationship with the Opposition since the December 2011 Bolotnaya demonstrations protesting the results of the Duma elections, Putin’s interactions with representatives of the Opposition appeared to represent a shift in policy. He answered their questions about the need for political reform and more individual freedom by suggesting that these issues will be examined in the future—without committing himself to any particular course of action. The fact that these exchanges were televised live gave the impression that the Kremlin feels confident enough that the Opposition represents no real threat that it can engage in a dialogue with its more mainstream representatives. After all, there were no extreme nationalists or hard-core socialists there. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who won 27% of the vote in the recent Moscow mayoral elections, was also absent, having apparently turned down an invitation to participate.

Putin was evasive about his future plans. When asked if he would run for office again in 2018, he did not rule it out. He noted approvingly that Angela Merkel was about to win a third term, as he had last year. He certainly gave the impression of being fully engaged, with ambitious—albeit undefined-- plans for Russia. The Russian economy may be experiencing low growth rates, but the main Valdai message was that Putin’s Russia is eager to engage the world, offering an alternative to a troubled West that has rejected major tenets of its own civilizational heritage.

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Russia remains a priority for the United States because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests on issues such as the Syrian conflict. Recent U.S. presidents have attempted repeatedly to forge a strong and productive partnership with Russia only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward and is there any prospect for change in the future?

In her new book, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014), Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and Georgetown University Professor Angela Stent calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.

On February 18, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings hosted a discussion featuring Stent that explored U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and the challenges ahead. CUSE Director Fiona Hill, co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings Press, 2013), and Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and author of Days of Fire (Doubleday, 2013), also joined the panel.

Brookings President Strobe Talbott, who previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of State and U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union, provided introductory remarks.

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• U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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